


The Adventures of Winger and Edison

by cori_the_bloody



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, One Shot Collection, ratings will vary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:43:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4319961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cori_the_bloody/pseuds/cori_the_bloody
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of one-shots focused on our favorite, absurdly attractive couple set throughout the series and beyond with a variety of ratings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Think Fast

**Author's Note:**

> Jeff visits Annie in DC. Set after Emotional Consequences of Broadcast Television, and originally published on Tumblr under the titles Both and Practice.

Annie falls back against the pillow, unable to hold back her honking laughter.

"Why are you doing that? Are you trying to insult me? Are you plotting my murder?" Annie snorts. "Was it...the sound I made when you bit my nipple? Because I just wasn't expecting that. I mean, it was really good, but—"

"No. Oh, babe, no." She giggles. "That was incredible. Everything tingles."

"Oh, good." He smirks then, "I've got some tingles myself."

After a moment of basking, Annie groans and rolls over to look at the clock. "We should get up and do something with our three hours before your flight back to Greendale."

"Sure. Have anything in mind?"

She considers. "Wanna see how many people will let us cut in line for stuff if we flash my FBI badge?"

Jeff pulls her to him, grabs her face in both hands, and kisses her. "I love you. Also, yes."

"I'm never going to get tired of hearing you say that."

"I love you or yes?"

Annie gets a wicked, sexy gleam in her eye: "Both."

###

“Excuse us, ma'am.” Annie confidently saunters up to the woman next in line at Java Hut and Jeff’s a step behind, eyes fixated on the snugness of Annie’s suit pants. “Official FBI business.”

The woman eyes Annie’s laminated security pass skeptically, but nods and takes a step back.

Annie flashes Jeff a clandestine thumbs-up and he nods his approval, impressed.

They step up to the counter, and she clears her throat. “We need a small, black house blend and a cafe mocha, please.”

“Hey!” the woman behind them protests.

Annie turns and shrugs at her. “Coffee is vital to our process. You want to be responsible for letting the Ad Hoc Killer roam free? He could strike again at any time, and we need to be prepared.” The woman pales, effectively silenced.

Jeff holds in his laughter till they get out of the store, coffee in hand. “What was _that_?” he chortles.

“I’m practicing my undercover skills. It’s important to think fast under pressure, Jeff.” She bats her eyes coyly.

“You were dangerous before you were getting trained to be dangerous. Now you’re downright lethal.”

“And don’t you forget it,” she grabs onto his collar and tugs him down for a kiss. “Want to go for some breakfast next?”

They choose an independently-owned bakery down the street from Jeff’s hotel. A tall, bald, and bulbous man is at the front of the line. Annie approaches with the same cocksure gait. “I’m sorry, sir, but we’re going to need to cut ahead. Official FBI business.”

Jeff notes the man’s uncanny resemblance to an exercise ball as he squints at Annie’s badge. “This says you’re an intern.”

“We’ve been compromised!” Annie tugs on Jeff’s hand, running toward the front door of the shop. “Abort mission!”

In the parking lot, he smirks down at her. “Thinking fast under pressure, huh?”

She sticks her tongue out at him.


	2. Notice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie wants to know what Jeff noticed about her. Takes place after The Politics of Human Sexuality.

Annie stormed toward the parking lot where Jeff Winger was leaning casually against his car, focused intently on his phone. Her chest was heaving with righteous indignation: Britta had mentioned something about Jeff in the ladies room that made Annie’s eye twitch a little.

“Jeff!” Her voice was shrill but succinct. She meant business. “I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Let’s take a moment to appreciate that Pierce isn’t here to make you regret your word choice.”

Annie scowled delicately, her lips and eyebrows puckering. “As if you’re any better, Mr. I Collect Girls Numbers But Don’t Bother to Learn Their Actual Names I Just Want to Remember What They Look Like So I Can Decide If I Want to Call For a Hook Up.” She stabbed a finger in his direction.

“Pointed,” he mocked, raising an eyebrow.

Annie’s nostrils flared, and Jeff couldn’t help but smirk. Noticing his satisfaction, Annie’s expression quickly melted into a pout. “What am I listed in there as?”

Jeff gulped.

“Look,” he pushed off his Lexus and started to pace away from her, eager to escape. “Annie, I’ve already learned my lesson. We really shouldn’t dwell on this. Abed wouldn’t approve of such a mundane fixation. Our story arcs are better than that.”

He looked back at her, noticing that she had tears pooling in her eyes.

“Oh, come on.” He threw his hands up in what Annie assumed was defeat. She smiled brightly, clapping her hands.

“Hurray! I just want to know what about me caught your attention the most, what stuck with you.” Was he imagining that she was batting her eyes at him? That was such a middle school thing to do.

He hated that it made him feel a little warmer from the inside out.

But it meant nothing. Nothing at all.

With a huff at the injustice of it all, he handed over his cell. Annie had already fished hers from her jean jacket pocket and was dialing Jeff’s number.

She closed her eyes tightly, willing herself not to be visibly disappointed at the caller ID on Jeff’s phone screen. She couldn’t curb her curiosity, though.

_Type A Doe Eyes_

Annie’s mouth unfurled into a shy, delighted smile. Jeff ignored the way it made his heart constrict slightly.

“You thought about cataloging me by my breasts, didn’t you?”

Jeff’s mouth dropped in shock at Annie’s bluntness.

“Pfft, no!” He stuttered out all too quickly.

Annie’s smile morphed into something more confident—sexier. She dangled Jeff’s phone in front of his face and he held out his palm to catch it when she released her grip.

She bounced away without another word, hoping Jeff couldn’t hear her giggle. She just couldn’t hold it in.

She knew she should be angry the same way Britta was, but it also felt good to be noticed. Annie thought that maybe it was okay to walk that line, as long as she didn’t actually fall for him.

Jeff Winger would be bad for Annie. He’d gobble up her heart and then spit it out without a second thought.

But it was physically impossible for Annie not to notice Jeff right back.

“Mr. Debate Partner with the Perfect Smile and Strong Hands.” Annie smiled to herself. Her phone wouldn’t allow for that many characters, but it didn’t stop her from trying anyway.


	3. "HERE'S BROWNIE!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Britta throws a going away party for Annie and Abed. Her unique dessert selection incites some naughtiness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks go out to baddest for reading this over and making it the best smut it could be. ;P

"Frankie, Britta said she was going to provide all the food. You didn't have to make anything," Annie says as she, Abed, and Frankie approach the porch to Britta's parents' house.

"Well, yes, but I figured everyone would be feeling especially vulnerable right now. I made brownies in an attempt to fill the emotional void left by Shirley, and later I'll play the steel drums."

Abed snorts and Annie shoots him a warning look before smiling at Frankie. "That's very thoughtful."

Britta had set aside her differences with her parents long enough to ask them for money to throw Abed and Annie a going away party the night before their departure. Delighted she came to them herself, George and Deb offered up their house as the venue, promising to make themselves scarce.

Though Britta had insisted she could take care of all the setting up, the group meets a half hour before the party's scheduled to start, just to be sure.

"Party people in the house!" Britta cheers when the trio enters the kitchen.

“Jeff’s picking up Chang and the dean. They should be here shortly,” Frankie says. “Where can I set these?”

“Nice,” Britta takes the plate and gives her a thumbs-up. “These’ll be a great addition to the batch I made earlier.”

“You baked?” Abed asks skeptically.

“Not as much as I could be,” she winks at him.

Abed looks to Annie, his head tilted. “Her answer doesn’t make sense, right? It’s not just me?”

“No,” Annie pats Abed’s shoulder, “it’s not just you.”

Jeff and the rest of the crew wander in then, and Annie sits up straighter and waves.

“Britta, your parents have a poster of the 1996 Broadway revival production of Chicago signed by the entire cast hanging in their foyer,” Dean Pelton flutters.

“Yeah, and?”

“That performance changed my life. All this time you had me believing your parents were monsters, and it turns out they are kindred spirits. I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this betrayal.”

“Hey, do we get to keep any fish that we can catch out of the tank in the office?” Chang wonders, picking a cupcake off the kitchen island.

Jeff walks up behind Annie and places a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Hey.”

She twists her torso to look up at him, smiling. “Hey. How was the drive?”

“Let’s just say we’re lucky I have six years of practice restraining myself or else these two would have been bound and gagged twenty minutes ago.”

She grins mischievously and scratches a few fingers along the inseam of his jeans. “You think you have a solid handle on self-restraint, do you?”

His breath gets all shaky in his chest and he catches her wrist before she can get much further in her teasing. “Are you testing me, Miss Edison?” His voice is low and gruff and sends shockwaves through her lower stomach.

“Would that be a problem, Professor Winger?”

“Hey, tall person! I need you to get a serving tray down for me,” Britta shouts. Jeff and Annie jump apart, startled.

“Duty calls,” Jeff levels Annie with a look that lets her know their conversation is far from over and walks away.

Abed is staring at Annie, cocking his eyebrow pointedly.

She flushes and narrows her eyes. “Shut up, Abed.”

###

Two hours later, the party is in full swing. The house is thudding with dance music and the first floor is packed with Greendale students, friends Annie made during her time in rehab, and a bunch of Abed’s AV connections.

Annie’s grateful for the party, she really is. But she can't bring herself to play the part of sociable guest of honor. She's too distracted by everything she needs to do to the next morning to be ready to go.

She's also distracted by all the things she'll never be completely ready to leave behind.

"So, I owe you five dollars," Jeff saunters up to where Annie's hanging out at the snack table, stress eating pretzels by the handful and nursing a mixed drink.

"Why's that?"

"Garret and his wife haven't divorced yet."

"I told you three weeks was too short, you cynical tower of scruff and arm muscles."

Jeff grins at her, tenderness exuding from his eyes. It's the same mix of adoration, respect, and longing that she's noticed every night since his revelation in the study room.

It leaves her breathless, and she grabs a brownie off the nearby tray just for something else to focus on.

Jeff smirks at her and picks one up too. After examining it closely, he says, "If Britta made this, there's like a seventy percent chance it'll kill me."

"Cheers," Annie bumps her square against his before taking a bite.

###

Having been stricken with the party spirit a little while later, Annie tugs Jeff out on the dancefloor, which is really the living room with all the furniture pushed against the walls. She's feeling weightless, her mind thrumming with the base of the pounding music and strangely disconnected from time.

She smiles saucily up at Jeff, who looks down at her with blatant hunger.

The word restraint means nothing to either of them the moment Annie turns and presses back against him.

It takes her a moment to find her footing. But once her body catches the rhythm, she's like a waterfall: a constant, graceful, directionless stream of movement. She writhes and dips and twists, her hips and knees doing most of the work.

Jeff seems kind of dumbfounded, locked in a standing position and every-so-slightly bouncing from one foot to the other. Annie's encouraged and enticed by the tight grip of his hands, though.

God, his hands. They're so large that his palms wrap her hip bones securely in their warmth, his thumbs tickle the dimples on her lower back, and his other fingers splay out on her pelvis. Her every movement is accompanied by a brush of his fingertips just inside her thigh, where her stomach flows into her hips, and along the band of her underpants, Jeff dipping below the elastic of her skirt and teasing her.

Those long, long fingers flex every time Annie does something especially surprising. It doesn't take her long to pick up on what he likes. To make those moves with more frequency.

The air conditioning is on full-blast, but the packed, exerted bodies send Annie's skin mixed signals. Her arms prickle with goosebumps, but her neck is damp and humid. She starts piling her long, thick hair atop her head and then releasing it to tumble in messy loops over her face and shoulder blades.

Her simple skirt and tank top become bothersome, sticking to the expanse of her back, and sweat prickles in her cleavage.

To be fair, Jeff's jeans and button up shirt—sleeves rolled up past the crease of his elbows, showing off his well-muscled forearms just like Annie loves—are bothersome, too. Just for a different reason.

As she's gathering her hair off her neck again, Jeff runs one of his hands up her side till it engulfs her shoulder. He smooths the pad of his thumb over the beginnings of her spine, awakening nerves all over, and Annie feels her entire body surge with heat.

The fact that she's leaving tomorrow isn't even on the periphery of her mind. Her other friends, her peers, they've all disappeared from the room.

All five of her senses are overwhelmed with Jeff and the air around them buzzes.

Wordlessly, Annie curls her fingers around the four at her shoulder and turns to face Jeff, leading him, backward, toward the stairs to the second floor.

He's staring intensely and directly into her eyes, his gaze boring into her so that she feels like…a hermit crab without a shell—squishy and vulnerable and ready to be devoured by predators.

Well, one predator in particular.

He follows her into a bedroom with a hand-knit quilt draped over a queen-sized bed and simple furnishings. Annie's hoping it's the guest room, but she only has so much capacity to care for such things. Her brain is swimming in lust.

As soon as Jeff gets the door closed behind him, Annie shoves him against it.

He falls back with an " _Ooof_ ," and scrambles to get a secure grasp on her as Annie hops into his arms, squeezing his hips between her thighs. Her lips are making their way from the base of his neck up along his jaw, and the scruff there catches at her skin, leaving her lips swollen and raw and wanting to feel _more more more_.

When she starts nibbling at the lobe of his ear, Jeff makes a shocked, pleased sound in the back of his throat and he shifts her so that he can hold her up with one arm and explore with the other.

His blunt nails scrape at the back of her thigh where her skirt doesn't cover as he grips at the skin there. The worn texture of his palm against her sensitive flesh sends jolts of electric arousal all over the place.

Suddenly not in the mood to mess around anymore, Annie drags her nails from where their digging into his shoulder down across his chest to find his nipple. She tweaks the nub between her pointer finger and thumb and Jeff loses his hold on her with a hissing, " _fuck, Annie_."

She lands, disgruntled, on her ass between his feet. He laughs at the expression on her face and helps her back to her feet.

"What are we doing?"

"Do you need me to write you up some instructions?" Annie snarks, already working on Jeff's belt.

"No, I mean, this is a party. For you. At a house neither of us live in. Plus, I'm pretty sure Britta put pot in those brownies."

Annie stops unbuttoning Jeff's jeans, attention momentarily diverted. "Huh, that would explain a lot, actually." Jeff nods.

Perhaps it's because of the drugs, but Annie's able to let it go pretty quickly, shrugging and pulling on Jeff's pants until they pool around his ankles.

"Annie," he says.

She huffs, and it’s _definitely_ because of the drugs and alcohol in her system that she’s just bold enough to say: "Look, Jeff. We're here and we're horny. You can either think of it as recapturing your youth and fuck me right now or you can go make small talk with Magnitude."

"Well, when you put it that way," his eyes gleam dangerously and the look has a direct effect on her, a surge of wet heat. The lower half of her body tingles and her mind goes numb, so she's definitely not prepared when Jeff tackles her onto the bed.

They land in a sloppy pile of limbs—her hip crashing into the bedframe—but she can't form a coherent thought as Jeff's mouth is warm on her neck, his tongue teasing the salty sweat off her skin. She grunts, managing to pull herself more comfortably and firmly onto the bed without disturbing his ministrations.

He moves off her into a kneeling position, though. Annie starts to pout when he quickly unbuttons his shirt.

Encouraged, she decides it's time to shed some clothing herself. She wiggles and shimmies out of her skirt and rips her tank off over her head so that she's left in her simple, green bra and laundry day undies.

Jeff falls forward to hover over her again—grinning like he’s so, so in love with her as he eyes her ensemble—and Annie takes a moment to admire the curves and creases of his muscular body.

She recalls something he said to her once, something about every girl deserving to be with him. It was such an arrogant thing—and had kind of hurt her feelings at the time—but when she's presented with his naked body, she's kinda inclined to agree. Everyone should get the chance to appreciate his physique, the way he feels and smells and tastes.

Whimpering, Annie lunges forward, using her teeth, lips, tongue…anything to explore his upper arms, neck, pectoral muscles.

His skin is twitching under her mouth and she giggles with delight when his reaction to her blowing on his exposed nipples is to squirm closer.

She continues working his upper body, and Jeff gains enough composure to run feather-light fingers along the inside of her thigh.

She spreads her legs as best she can in their position and he ghosts his fingers over her. Mewling in frustration—she needs him to be rubbing her into blissful oblivion—she jerks her hips up into his hand.

That’s all it takes for him to stop resisting.

He drags his fingers up and down over her, the unique friction of her slick panties making her moan breathily against his skin.

When his fingers find her clit through the thin cotton, Annie gasps laughter and falls back against the bed, “Mhmm.”

He puts more pressure there, and Annie’s mind is flooded with the sensation.

Right when she’s about to tumble over the edge, she stops Jeff’s hand. She needs for them both to be naked.

Jeff gets the idea when Annie props herself up on one elbow to unhook her bra. He stands to slip out of his striped boxer-briefs, and—oh, yes—any human would be lucky to behold such a fine specimen.

Eager to feel every inch of him, Annie lifts her hips off the bed to shed her only remaining clothing. Jeff crawls up her body after grabbing a condom out of his wallet and hurriedly rolling it on, sprinkling kisses along Annie’s thighs, hip bones, stomach, breasts—he _worships_ her breasts—collarbone, and neck.

“You good?” he checks.

“Oh yeah,” Annie laughs.

He pushes into her, and Annie feels a completeness that she’d never associated with sex before. This is right. Despite their insane difference in size, they fit perfectly together. She wants him to live inside.

Annie doesn’t waste time. Her fingers dance along his back, down to his ass, and she pulls him ever-so-further in. Jeff grunts and starts thrusting his hips—slowly at first but vigor mounting quickly.

Annie’s lost in a sensory overload. Her brain’s exploding with pleasure, and she has to keep a hand clasped over her own mouth to keep from attracting attention with her moans.

In a moment of inspiration, she kicks her feet up and wraps her legs around his hips.

"Oh my… _Jeff_ ," Annie groans. The new angle brings a different wave of intense tingles, and she feels herself tumble over into erratic bliss.

"So—ha— _shit, shit_." Her muscle spasms bring a muttering Jeff along with her.

He collapses on top of her, and Annie enjoys the sensation of his warm, slick skin against hers till her slides out and rolls over.

She whimpers at the loss and curls into his side, her head on his chest.

“Fun,” she says dreamily.

“Oh yeah,” he repeats her earlier sentiment.

“We should start experimenting some more. You know, different positions and stuff.”

“Miss Edison, are you planning future sexcapades with me?”

“Well you _are_ coming to visit me in DC, aren’t you?”

“Bought a ticket yesterday.”

“Good.” She nuzzles closer.

“We should go back to the party before people come looking for us.”

Annie whimpers. “Five more minutes?”

He wraps his arms around her and draws her in tight. “Definitely.”

Britta finds them later—naked and asleep. She accepts it as payback for not telling them about the brownies.


	4. Nothin' new is sweeter than with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeff kinda freaks out after he and Annie receive big news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 2,310  
>  **Disclaimer:** These character's belong to Dan Harmon, etc., etc. I simply enjoy manipulating them.  
>  **Author's Note:** As usual, many thanks to bethanyactually, without whom this story would lack some of my favorite lines and moments.  <3  
> You may recognize the title of this one-shot as a lyric from "Home" by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.

Though Jeff had always low-key wanted kids (a boy he could teach how to snowboard and talk his way out of anything, or a girl he could take to father-daughter dances and to whom he’d recommend skin-care products), his brain short-circuited when Annie emerged from the bathroom in their apartment gripping the positive pregnancy test.

She looked bewildered, her eyes wide and blue as ever, and he could almost see the lists forming in her mind: books to read and classes to attend, all feeding into a masterlist of things to do before the baby came.

Jeff’s own mind had stuttered and then stopped working altogether.

He had slipped out to go to a bar while Annie was on the phone with Britta and Shirley.

And he’d had a couple shots. And then maybe a couple more.

And then consciousness had slipped out of his reach so much so that he didn’t remember catching a cab to the airport or buying a plane ticket, let alone flying to Washington.

(He had _no idea_ what kind of drunk logic or extenuating circumstances had led him to choose Seattle, of all places.)

He rolled over in his lumpy, cheap motel bed and groaned. The sun streaming through the thin curtains made his head throb and his mouth tasted like tar.

This probably proved he wasn’t ready to have a kid, right? Mature, adult people who were ready to take on the responsibility of human life didn’t fly across the country in a drunken stupor, wasting money and leaving the one person they care about most in the world to deal with huge news on their own.

People who were ready to have kids planned for these things. They didn’t just forget to use protection because their partner had been in New York for a week working on an important FBI case and urgency got the better of them upon her return home.

People who were ready to have kids had savings accounts with more than $800 in them.

People who were ready to have kids didn’t have a veritable cornucopia of diagnosable mental illnesses that they weren’t dealing with.

God, what if little Sebastian had worse anxiety than his father and couldn’t look people in the eye?

What if Abigail had crippling depression that she hid behind layers and layers of snarky neuroticism?

That kind of thing _was_ genetic, wasn’t it?

Jeff sat up and his entire world spun a little. He could feel the burn of bile in his throat, and he took a deep breath through his nose, closing his eyes and counting to twenty.

Fuck.

His kid was going to be a jaded, bitter, depressed alcoholic because of him.

He was doomed to be as useless a father as his own.

He couldn’t take care of a child. He couldn’t even take care of himself most of the time.

Annie, of course, would make a great mother. She was warm and caring and thoughtful and gentle.

But she shouldn’t have to do it all on her own.

Jeff was going to let her down. She was going to end up resenting him and leaving him and then he’d be all alone.

The thoughts were shooting through his brain faster and faster until they were a tornado of self-doubt.

_You’re a failure_ , his mind kept telling him. _You will fail._

He needed a distraction, something to keep his mind occupied. (And it probably shouldn’t be more alcohol.)

After standing and taking a moment to steady himself, Jeff went to the bathroom to do his best to freshen up. Since he’d hadn’t exactly packed for the trip, there wasn’t much he could do but splash cold water on his face and swish some around in his mouth.

His tongue felt pasty and he needed something other than tap water to combat the pervasive tar taste.

Jeff must have slept through most of the morning because the sun was high and bright in the sky. It made his eyes pulsate, and he was happy to find that his sunglasses had made the trip with him.

The Seattle air was a cool 60 degrees and smelled of salt, and it soothed his sticky skin.

Jeff’s motel was somewhere in the midst of urban sprawl—not quite a part of the city, but not exactly in suburbia, either. As he walked further into the heart of downtown, more and more people were bustling around. Street performers. Shoppers. Couples. Families.

There were a lot of families. It was early June, and there were dads dressed in goofy Hawaiian shirts and moms with fanny packs, holding their kids’ hands and stopping to buy ice cream.

Jeff walked into the first Starbucks he saw to buy himself an iced coffee and a bottle of water. Then he found a bench that overlooked a public beach and sat, watching.

His eyes were unconsciously drawn to a girl who had to be about eight or nine. She had long hair that hadn’t decided if it was straight or curly, blonde or brown. She and her dad were trying to get a colorful butterfly kite up in the air, but every time the wind swept it up, it came crashing down seconds later.

The father kept patiently demonstrating how the girl should hold the kite, how far she should run before letting go. He must have showed her fifteen different times before the butterfly finally took off for real, both of them cheering excitedly as the father guided the unraveling string.

A woman stood from a beach towel, her finger holding her place in a thick paperback novel. Once the father handed control of the kite back over to the girl, giving her more patient instructions, the woman slipped her arm around the father’s lower back, leaning into him and watching as the butterfly darted back and forth on the wind. The father smiled down at the woman, and they shared a sweet, brief kiss before their daughter demanded their attention back.

Jeff felt a gut-flipping, pulse-spiking certainty pass over him.

He wanted moments like that. They were well within his reach.

He could see himself reading bedtime stories and Annie singing little Abigail a lullaby every night before bed.

He could hear himself cheering on Sebastian as he learns to ride his bike, hear the clatter of steel against concrete when the bike inevitably pitches. Annie, of course, would be there to disinfect the wound and bandage Sebastian up.

He could smell the freshly mown grass and orange slices as he and Annie cheered Abigail on from the sidelines at her first soccer game.

He could taste the potato latkes and applesauce of Sebastian’s first Hanukkah.

He could feel the texture of Annie’s smooth knee in his hand as he squeezed it with pride, both of them gussied up and watching Abigail deliver her valedictorian speech at her high school graduation.

God, he’d been an idiot. A drunken idiot.

There was suddenly an ache in his chest: homesickness. Jeff needed to hear Annie’s voice.

But when he patted his pockets, looking for his phone, he came up empty. Cursing himself, Jeff threw away his empty coffee cup, fisted the bottle of water, and jogged all the way back to the motel.

His phone was sitting on the nightstand, and he had eight missed calls and four voicemails from Annie.

_“Hey, sweetie! It’s me. Where’d you go? Wherever it was, you should bring back a bottle of wine so we can celebrate!”_

_“Jeff. It’s Annie. It’s three in the morning. Can you at least text me so I know you’re okay?”_

_“You better call me back you infuriating and evasive Gap mannequin.”_

_“If you’re not ready we don’t have to see this through, Jeff. There are options. We have options. But we should really go over them together. Call me back. Please. I have my ringer turned all the way up and I don’t care what time it is. Just call me when you get this.”_

Well shit. Jeff dialed Annie’s number, but the call went right to voicemail. “Fuck!” he shouted, pounding his fist down painfully against the weak plywood of the nightstand. He almost missed the knock at the door.

He was ready to tell housekeeping to come back later when he wrenched the door open, but instead of the motel staff, he found Annie.

It was like she’d known he was ready to see her.

“I tracked your credit card,” she explained, her eyes narrowed. “And I’ve been driving since before the sun was up, so you better start talking, mister.”

He didn’t even bother with groveling or half-assed justifications. He just surged forward and dragged her into a hug, holding on for dear life. “I love you,” he breathed into her hair.

She hesitated for several moments before her strong arms squeezed him even closer. “I love you, too,” she sighed. When they pulled apart, she crossed her arms and set her jaw. “Now talk.”

But he wasn’t quite ready to. Instead, he yanked on one of her wrists until she dropped her defensive stance. When she did, he pulled her inside, walked her back against the door, and leaned in slowly, communicating his intent with his eyes and giving her the chance to pull away.

She huffed in irritation, but parted her lips and glanced down from his eyes to his mouth.

Jeff closed the remaining distance in a hurry.

After a few moments of kissing, Annie tugged her face away. “Jeff,” she beseeched, a hint of warning in her voice.

“Not yet.”

She rolled her eyes at him, pecked him on the edge of his lips, and nodded at the door. “Let’s go for a walk. I’ve never been to Seattle before.”

They ended up at the Seattle Great Wheel, the giant Ferris wheel overlooking the waterfront. Though he was aware that she was sneaking accusatory glances at him the whole way, Annie seemed to understand that Jeff still needed time to gather his thoughts, so she let him brood in silence till they were settled in a carriage and on their way up.

“Did you get my messages?” she asked.

Jeff nodded. “All four. Right before you arrived, actually. Gap mannequin?” he cocked an eyebrow at her.

She eyed his fitted jeans and pastel colored button-down shirt pointedly.

“Point taken.” A gusty wind off the ocean made their carriage lurch, and Annie gripped his forearm to steady herself. “Nice weather we’re having.”

She glared at him. “I’m not going to jabber meaninglessly about the weather, Jeff.”

He sighed. “Yeah, okay.” He paused. “I just don’t know where to start.”

“How about you start by telling me why you left in the first place.”

“Terror, mostly.”

“Okay. But you don’t think I was scared, too? Why didn’t you stay so we could work things out together?”

“You got so excited, phoning the girls and everything. You didn’t seem too afraid.”

Annie hummed in understanding and pushed her hair behind her ear. “I guess it was so unreal, I felt like I needed to tell someone just to make it true.”

“It felt _too_ real for me. I kind of spiraled.”

She ran her fingers up into the hair at the back of his neck, and Jeff let his head fall forward. “So, we both reacted kind of badly.”

“Some of us worse than others.”

Annie laughed without humor. “The question we have to answer now is do we want to be parents? I know I wouldn’t mind more time to focus on my career, but,” her hand fell to her stomach, “I also want to start a family with you.” She peeked up at him through her lashes and Jeff leaned forward to kiss her forehead, covering the hand over her stomach with one of his own and squeezing.

He whispered against her soft skin, “I want to start a family with you, too. I’m scared, but I want it.”

“So let’s do this,” Annie whispered back intensely. “Let’s have this baby.”

“Everything is going to change,” Jeff said.

She nodded. “It is. And you can’t just run off the next time something big happens.”

“I know. I promise.”

“I don’t have time to chase you across the country every time we reach a new milestone.”

He snorted. “I’m glad you did this time, though.”

Annie cupped his cheek and smoothed a finger along his jawbone. “You’re sure you want to do this,” she checked.

“I really, really do,” Jeff infused as much fervor into his voice as possible. He closed his eyes and whispered sheepishly, “I even have some names in mind.”

He cracked one eye back open just in time to see Annie pull back, a surprised smile on her face. “Oh yeah?”

He hummed in assent. “What do you think of Sebastian?”

Her eyes sparkled with amusement, and Jeff would swear that she could see right through him. “Sebastian, like the crab from _The Little Mermaid_?”

Jeff averted his gaze, feeling a surge of heat as blood rushed into his cheeks. “If you say anything about a bike chain or doe eyes, I’m running into the ocean the second we reach the ground.”

She laughed and kissed his shoulder. “Jeff Winger’s a sentimental sap,” she teased.

“Nope.”

“He wants to get married and have a big family with Disney-themed names.”

“Never,” he grinned down at her with narrowed eyes.

She traced the laugh lines in his cheek with a cold finger. “I like Sebastian,” she said finally. “But we have plenty of time to talk about it.”

He nodded, caught her finger, and kissed the pad. “Nine whole months.”

Annie smiled radiantly and tilted up her head, searching for his lips.

Jeff grabbed her face in both hands and kissed her as they crested the top of the Ferris wheel.


	5. my heart belongs beneath the ocean floor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeff's meeting his dad for the first time and asks Annie to come along for moral support.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 4,765  
>  **Author's Note:** Thank you to my fabulous beta, bethanyactually, who edited this fic even though she was busy. Another thanks goes out to the delightful [wherever-in-the-spectrum-you-are](http://wherever-in-the-spectrum-you-are.tumblr.com/) who prompted me to do this fix-it.   
>  Enjoy!

As it turns out, meeting your estranged father for a holiday dinner requires preparation.

Jeff's been sitting on his bed for the last twenty minutes, staring at his reflection in the mirror on the back of his bedroom door.

Twenty minutes, and the guy staring back at him doesn't look any less terrified.

_C'mon Winger_ , Jeff thinks to himself. He wills his joints to unlock and his breathing to return to normal. _It's one dinner. He already left you behind, and he can't possibly do anything more disappointing. So just go have a casual dinner with a stranger. That’s what this man is: a stranger_.

The Jeff in the mirror looks unconvinced and perhaps a little worried that the voice of his internal monologue sounds a bit too much like Abed. (Damn those frequent voiceovers.)

Suddenly, his phone buzzes in his pocket, making him jump to his feet in surprise.

His muscles relax a little when he sees who's calling, though.

"Annie," Jeff answers the phone.

"Oh, Jeff! I figured you'd be too busy to pick up, but I just wanted to wish you luck! I'll be thinking about you."

His stress eases and he grins in spite of himself. "I asked you guys not to make a big deal out of this, remember?”

“Well, yeah, but some things _are_ a big deal even if you don’t _make_ them a big deal. I think this qualifies.”

Just like that the tension in his chest is back. “Gee, thanks, _Britta_. I was just thinking I could use someone to put more pressure on today.”

She scoffs. “Hey, do you hear any music? Am I gloating or taking credit for something I’m not actually responsible for?”

Jeff rolls his eyes and, when it’s clear that she’s not asking it as a rhetorical question, says, “No.”

He can practically hear her smiling. “I’m proud of you, you know. I think this will be really good for you. And if you need any moral support whatsoever you know how to reach me.”

Jeff rolls his shoulders and lifts his chin. When he glances over to meet his reflection again, the guy staring back at him looks much more confident.

“Thanks, Annie. Tell Shirley I said hi and Happy Thanksgiving.”

“Of course. I’ll be sending you positive thoughts. Bye!”

He hangs up and checks his outfit over in the mirror. Once it’s clear he’s ready to go, Jeff grabs the bottle of scotch he (eventually, after much anguish and lost sleep) chose to take, his wallet, and his keys off the counter, and heads out to meet his father.

###

As it turns out, real things—like driving down the real street your father lives on and pulling into the real driveway at the real house your father really exists in—are _way_ scarier than hypothetical speculation.

Jeff shifts the car into park and stares at the plain-enough brown house. He takes his phone out of the cup holder and pulls up the address on the internet.

The Google maps street view confirms that this is the house that’s supposed to be sitting at this address.

Then he pulls out the slip of paper he wrote the address down on.

Yup, he hadn’t entered it wrong.

But he really should have confirmed with his dad that he’d gotten the address correct when they spoke on the phone. He hadn’t wanted to show weakness or seem overeager at the time, but what if he'd heard one of the numbers incorrectly? What if it was a 'Lane' instead of an 'Avenue' and his dad had misspoken?

Fuck, he’s an idiot.

He goes to shift the car back into drive—to pull away and never come back—but his sweaty palm slips off the gearshift. He throws his head back into the headrest, flinging his arm over his eyes.

No, okay, he can do this.

He _has_ to do this or he’ll regret it for a long-ass time.

When he glances back at the house, though, he finds himself dialing a familiar number instead of leaving the car.

“Hey,” Annie answers, “Everything okay?”

Maybe it’s because he’s coming apart at the seams and doesn’t feel very suave, but he tells her the truth right away. “No. I think I need to cash in some of that moral support.”

“Of course! What can I do for you? Encouraging speech?”

“I was kinda hoping you would be able to come here and, um, meet my father with me.”

“Oh,” Annie hesitates. “We let Pierce drive because he threw a fit about us emasculating him somehow? I don’t remember his exact reasoning because I tuned out after he brought up Eartha Kitt. Anyway, I don’t have a way to get there.”

“I’ll come pick you up,” he says hurriedly, wiping his palm on his jeans before putting the car in gear.

“Yeah? Sure!” Her voices gets quiet and Jeff has to concentrate to hear her say, “Between you and me, I’m happy to have a good reason to leave. Shirley’s family is _mean_.”

“Cool. Be there to rescue you in 15.”

###

As it turns out, Annie is a pretty good distraction in her teal dress, which complements her skin, makes her eyes shine bright and blue, and has a strategically placed bow that draws exactly the right amount of attention to her cleavage.

“You look nice,” Jeff smirks at her as she gets into the car.

Annie runs a hand over her hair and grins back. “Thanks. You’re not looking too bad yourself.”

“Well, I work out.”

He tilts his head and winks at her. It’s a lame line, but her responding smile is radiant.

And he kind of forgets where they are and what’s going on until she looks away to fasten her seatbelt and asks, “So how late are you for meeting your dad?”

Jeff clears his throat and pulls away from the curb. “We didn’t have a specific meeting time. It was more of a range, and we’re still well within it.”

He is silent most of the ride back to his dad’s house, but Annie’s hardly fazed. She amuses him with a detailed recounting of all the judgmental passive-aggression she had to put up with at Shirley’s Thanksgiving in the thirty minutes she was there.

“And you wouldn’t believe how many people asked me if ‘Jews celebrate Thanksgiving.’ Shirley sure is lucky I love her, because in any other situation heads would’ve been rollin’.”

Jeff snorts and pulls back into his dad’s driveway. “I can’t promise you my dad’s going to be any more polite. In fact, I couldn’t promise you anything because I know next to nothing about him.”

She shrugs and smiles, soft and caring. “Then I guess it’ll be like going on an adventure together. Meeting new people can be like an adventure, don’t you think?”

He rolls his eyes and then jabs her in the arm. “You’ve clearly been living with Abed and Troy for _too_ long.”

“Whatever,” she shakes her head at him, grinning, and gets out of the car muttering to herself. “Here I am, trying to be _supportive_.”

He smiles at her as they walk up to the door. “Hey,” he stops her before she knocks. “Thanks for doing this.”

She pops up onto her toes to give him a peck on the cheek.

Jeff nods, takes a deep breath, and knocks on the door.

The man who answers has a head of starkly white hair. He’s kind of stocky, though he’s not short, and he has a prominent chest.

His self-satisfied grin tugs at some memories in Jeff’s brain, but he still checks: “William Winger?”

The man nods and gestures Jeff and Annie inside. “You must be Jeff.”

“I am,” Jeff confirms and then an uncomfortable silence settles over the trio.

“I’m Annie,” Annie says after a few beats. She holds out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Jeff’s dad grips it and gives it a firm shake, clearly sizing Annie up as he does so.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing along such a lovely lady.” William tilts his chin up and studies Jeff. “She your girlfriend?”

“I—uh,” Jeff stumbles. Later, it’ll occur to him that he could have just said Annie was his friend, but in the moment Jeff’s too worried that if he tries to answer, he’ll start to babble nervously about how he needs moral support because he’s a child who can’t sort out any of his feelings.

(He’s also choking on the fact that his dad is kinda, sorta, definitely hitting on Annie.)

Annie shoots Jeff a strange look and he stares back helplessly. She looks confused for a second before standing up straighter and threading her fingers through Jeff’s—giving his hand a comforting squeeze—and gripping his forearm reassuringly. “I am.”

He should probably feel weird about the lie—unsettled or something other than _relieved_ —but he just squeezes Annie's hand back tightly.

“Well done,” his dad chuckles.

“Yeah, thanks,” Jeff says dryly.

“Oh, great.” Some guy who appears to be a few years younger than Annie makes a show of stomping down a nearby staircase. “My replacement is here.”

“Who’s this?” Annie asks.

“I’m William Junior.” The guy overemphasizes each syllable.

“You have a kid?” Jeff feels his eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah, well,” William shrugs in a ‘what are you going to do’ kind of way. “He _usually_ goes by Willy Junior.”

“I think I can introduce myself, dad. _God_. You’re always undermining me.” He turns to Jeff. “And I’m not a kid, alright? I’m twenty years old. I’m an _adult_.”

“It sounds much cuter when Troy and Abed say stuff like that. And it’s more convincing,” Annie whispers into Jeff’s shoulder. He snorts.

Thankfully, his dad doesn’t catch the exchange. He’s too busy yelling at Willy Junior to shut the hell up.

Annie squeezes Jeff’s hand again and he squeezes back, glancing down at her. She’s smiling up at him, her eyes filled with concern. In response to her unasked question about how he’s doing, he widens his eyes and gives a tiny nod in Willy Junior’s direction, mouthing, _Even more damaged than me_.

The tentativeness disappears and she smiles, bright and wide, before elbowing him in the side. He feels his heart lurch up into his throat and he has to look away.

“So, I brought scotch,” Jeff says, and thrusts the bottle at his father unceremoniously.

He takes it, skimming the label. "Hmm, this is some good stuff. You've got taste. Come on to the kitchen. Let's have ourselves a pre-dinner drink, shall we?"

“I never turn down a drink.” Jeff says amiably. “Annie?”

“I suppose we won’t have to drive for a while, so there’s plenty of time to sober up.”

“Is this your way of shutting me out?” Willy Junior shouts at them as William leads Jeff and Annie to the kitchen. “Willy’s not allowed to drink; make him feel excluded!”

“Why isn’t he allowed to drink? Is he on some kind of medication?” she lowers her voice to ask Jeff’s dad the second question.

He snorts. “Nah, he’s underage and a pussy.”

“Oh,” Annie’s jaw snaps shut and she shoots Jeff a bewildered look.

Jeff has a lot of questions to ask: some that he’s had floating around in the recesses of his mind since he was a kid and quite a few more that developed in the seconds after Willy Junior fell into the picture. He’s too overwhelmed to do anything but sit in dumbfounded silence while his dad pours three generous glasses of scotch, though.

Jeff swishes the contents of his glass around as Annie immediately takes a big gulp.

“Oh god,” she splutters. “Excuse me. Bathroom?”

“Down the hall, first door on the left,” William directs her. “She’s not exactly graceful, is she? But she’s got a great…” He gestures to his chest. “You know what I’m saying.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Jeff says to the scotch in his glass. To his dad, he just nods.

“How’d you two meet?”

“Oh, uh,” Jeff takes a daringly large sip of alcohol and fares much better than Annie. “We met at school.”

“Why do you go to school? You’re, like, forty,” Willy Junior says, wandering into the kitchen and grabbing at a can of cranberry sauce on the counter. William smacks it out of his hands.

Jeff takes another drink of scotch.

“That is a much longer story,” Annie answers for him, returning from the bathroom and hopping up onto a bar stool.

“You okay?” Jeff checks.

“I think I scorched a few taste buds off my tongue, but, yeah, I’m peachy.”

Jeff cocks an eyebrow at her.

“Well don’t leave us hanging, lovebirds.” Willy Junior makes a grab for the baster and William immediately snags it out of his hands and puts it back. “What’s the story?”

“Well, I don’t really like to talk about it." Willy Junior continues to stare expectantly at him. "Fine. I faked a bachelor’s degree and worked as a lawyer for six years before I got caught. Then I went back to school.”

“You were a lawyer? Aw, man, you’re even cooler than I feared you’d be,” Willy Junior whines, reaching for a box of stuffing. Once again, William knocks it out of his hands.

“I’m sure you’re cool, too,” Jeff says before drowning the contents of his glass. William fluidly tops him off.

“Yeah,” Annie says. “What do you do? Go to school? Work?”

“I go to CU Denver.”

“Oh, exciting! What are you studying there?”

He glares at Annie. “I’m undecided. Why are you asking me so many questions?”

Annie tilts her head at him. “Because I’ve never met you before, and it’s a tradition among people to converse. You can ask me questions, too, if you want.”

Willy Junior strokes his chin. “How’s this guy at sex? Does he have a really big penis? I bet his penis is bigger than mine.”

“I—uh,” Annie stutters, her face going purple.

“Is his penis nicely shaped? Because I worry that my penis isn’t.”

“For the love of god, please stop saying penis!” Jeff slams his empty glass down on the counter.

Willy Junior’s chin quivers and he bursts into tears and runs out of the room. “My new brother hates me!”

“Wow.” Jeff rubs a hand over his face. “This is going much differently than I thought it would. I’m sorry about all this. Maybe we should just go.” He starts to get off the barstool, but Annie catches his shoulder gently and then rubs his back between his shoulder blades as he settles back in the seat.

“Nonsense.” His dad has a rumbling laugh. “That nutty excuse for a man is a loose cannon. I never know what’s going to set him off. You don’t have to feel bad about that.” William gestures dismissively in the direction Willy Junior ran off.

“So,” Annie says when Jeff doesn’t respond for several moments. “Do you need any help with dinner?”

“Oh, actually, that would be great. Thanks, Ann.” William shoots a finger gun at her. “There’s fully-prepared mashed potatoes, casserole, and pie in the fridge that’ll need to be warmed up when everything else is ready. The turkey’s in the oven, so all you have to do it open the cranberry sauce, brown the rolls, and keep an eye on the bird.” He winks at her and then grasps Jeff’s shoulder. “Let’s get better acquainted while the lady cooks, huh?” He doesn’t wait for a response, just shuffles over to the couch, bottle of scotch in hand. “Let me know if you need help finding anything in the kitchen,” he calls over his shoulder.

Jeff looks over at Annie and mouths, _What_?

_Ann_? Annie mouths back.

Out loud Jeff says, “Actually, I think—”

Annie rolls her eyes and shakes her head. “Jeff, it’s fine. Go get to know your dad.”

“But…”

She shoots him a look that clearly says ‘I am resolved’ and points a stern finger at the couch.

He feels bad, but she turns her back on him, already opening every drawer and cabinet in sight.

Jeff feels a dense fondness settle in his chest because this is exactly the kind of sacrifice Annie would make for him—for any of their friends, really. He observes her for several moments before going to watch Thanksgiving football with his dad.

###

As it turns out, four glasses of scotch can make even the most pompous and misogynistic of fathers seem like everything you’ve ever wanted.

"C'mon, Griffin!" William shouts at the television screen. "Pass the damn ball already!"

"And…yup. He's been sacked. At least we're still ahead."

William holds out his glass to Jeff, and he clinks his own against it before knocking back the rest of his scotch.

"So, you were telling me about your undefeated public urination track record."

"Right, right. Okay, so, by the time I won the case for the mayor's son, I’d developed a bit of a reputation. When the wife of one of the major shareholders at Halliburton was charged with disorderly conduct, public nudity, and possession, Ted brought the case right to me. I was nervous, you know. Winning the case would be really lucrative for the firm…it was a lot of pressure."

"What'd you do?"

"I made the case that her nudity should actually be looked on as an act of charity, sealed it up with a joke about how she was only marking her territory, and buried the prosecution alive."

When he gets done laughing, William claps Jeff on the shoulder. "Oh, man. You're a spitfire, aren't you? Nice job, kid."

Jeff smiles and looks down at his hands, not sure how to respond. After a few moments of silence, he says, “I’m going to check on Annie.”

His dad only nods, fixated on the game.

“How’s it going?” Jeff asks, filling his glass with water at the sink and then leaning against the counter.

Annie’s rushing around the kitchen, looking for bowls and serving spoons and peeking into the oven to check on the turkey. “It’s alright,” she says, her voice a little harried. Guilt twists deep in Jeff’s stomach. She stops rushing around long enough to meet his stare. “How are things with your dad?”

“Good,” Jeff responds, too cheery, and then lowers his voice. “It’s weird, you know.”

She walks over to him. “How are you feeling?”

“I really don’t know how to answer that,” he says. “On one hand, I’m kind of ecstatic. On the other, I’m kind of disappointed. Mostly, though, this all feels surreal. I’ve spent years upon years thinking what it would be like if this happened, but now that it is I barely feel like I’m here at all.”

Annie gently takes one of his hands between her own. “I think that’s totally normal,” she assures him. “The first meeting was bound to seem a little forced and strange. Hopefully it’ll get better the more you see him.”

“More?” Jeff raises his eyebrows at her. “I don’t know if that’s in the cards.”

She pulls away from him when a timer goes off and pulls rolls out of the oven. “Well, I mean, why not? You don’t have to make any additional plans if you don’t want to, but you know where he lives now. It’s totally possible that you’ll run into each other, or something’ll come up. Plus, you have a half-brother now. You might want to see him more.”

“Yeah,” Jeff drawls, turning it over in his head. “That’s kind of the strangest part of it all.”

Annie senses his hesitance and looks up from emptying a can of cranberry sauce into a bowl. “You’re jealous, aren’t you?”

Jeff looks over at his dad, who still seems completely unaware of their hushed conversation, yelling at the television. He steps closer to Annie and speaks low in her ear. “Well, yeah. I mean, what changed?”

“You could always ask,” Annie suggests.

Jeff shakes his head vigorously. “No way. Things are just barely cordial. Why stir the pot?”

She looks up at him sadly, like she can read everything he’s not saying right there on his face, and he feels his heart wrench in anticipation of what she’s going to say. “You may never get a better chance to confront him. I’m not saying you have to, but maybe—in order to get closure—it’s exactly what you need to do.”

Jeff’s staring pensively at the back of his dad’s head when Willy Junior wanders back into the room.

“Something smells good,” he says, holding some portable gaming device in his hands.

“Thank you,” Annie says, preening a little. “Want to be my taste-tester?”

“Oh my god.” Willy Junior lets his device clatter to the ground and wraps Annie in a tight hug. “I would love that.”

“Oh,” Annie pats his back tentatively. “Okay. Good.”

“Will you guys adopt me? You’re like the mother I’ve always wanted.” Willy Junior nuzzles his face into Annie’s hair and Jeff has to resist the urge to tear the little weirdo off of her.

“I don’t think—” Annie starts, but William comes into the kitchen, cutting her off.

“Willy, leave your brother’s girlfriend alone. She’s making dinner.”

“I know, and I’m helping!”

“Mmhmm,” Annie confirms, her voice sounding tight in her throat. “How about you and Jeff set the table?”

Willy Junior springs into action immediately and William pours himself another glass of scotch. He offers the bottle to Jeff, who shakes his head.

After a whirlwind of confusion and shuffling around the kitchen and dining room, the group of four sits down and starts passing dishes around the table.

“Before we eat,” Annie says, scooping some green bean casserole onto her plate, “I’d just like to say that I’m grateful to have a nice place to live and the opportunity to go to school. I’m grateful to you guys for hosting,” she nods at William and Willy Junior, “and to my boyfriend, who is a wonderful, caring, brave person.”

Jeff’s stomach flips pleasantly at hearing Annie casually refer to him as her boyfriend. She’s watching him carefully and cocks her eyebrow as if inviting him to challenge her. He rolls his eyes in response, reaching for her knee under the table and giving it a squeeze.

“I’ll go next!” Willy Junior practically jumps out of his seat, raising his hand. “I’m grateful that I’ll be able to move out in a few years and that Annie is going to be my new mom because she’s warm and soft and womanly and stuff.”

“That’s really not—”

“We’re not adopting you,” Jeff says. “Your real mom probably wouldn’t appreciate that too much.”

Again, Willy Junior bursts into tears and runs from the room.

“Jesus,” Jeff curses under his breath.

“He’s unnecessarily touchy about the subject,” William shakes his head. “She’s been dead twenty years, and he never actually knew her. I keep hoping he’ll let it go.”

“She’s dead,” Jeff deadpans.

“Yup.”

“And here I thought you had stepped up in some way—changed or evolved or whatever. But no. You just got stuck with the parenting gig.”

“Well, she had a sister that was going to take him. But she got cold feet at the last minute,” William says resentfully. “You know, adopting him wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world. He doesn’t need _that_ much looking after.”

“Unbelievable,” Annie lets her fork clatter onto her plate. “You are unbelievable. First, you make me cook dinner at _your_ house then you try to pawn your son off on us? I’m sorry, Jeff, I really am. I tried to be nice. But you, sir, are a _terrible_ person.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Jeff stands. “You’re totally right. I spent my entire childhood trying to impress you—to do something, anything, that would make you proud enough to come back. Eventually, I gave up on that empty hope and settled for trying to get people to care about me. I mean, I was obsessed with being the most liked, the most loved, because I was afraid, deep down, that I actually wasn’t lovable at all.

“And then I find out that you have a kid, and this foolish hope that I can have some kind of relationship with you takes root. Because if you can be there for _him_ , why can’t you be there for me? But you’re no father. You’re the same callous, selfish dick that you’ve always been. And the sooner I accept that, the quicker I can move on. We’re leaving. Happy fucking Thanksgiving.”

Annie is half a step behind Jeff on the way to the car and runs into his back when he has to come to a halt to keep from tripping over Willy Junior, who’s sitting just outside the door.

“Oh, you guys.”

“Yeah.” Jeff isn’t sure what to say and settles for, “Sorry for making you cry.”

“That’s okay,” Willy Junior shrugs. “It happens a lot. You leaving already?”

“I think it’s time,” Jeff nods. Willy grunts and stares at his shoes. Jeff turns to Annie. She gives him an encouraging thumbs-up. “Hey, um, you want to exchange numbers? We could maybe hang out sometime.”

“Really?” Willy jumps to his feet excitedly. “That would be the most awesome thing!”

Jeff sighs and pulls out his phone. “What’s your number?” Willy feeds it to him. “Great. I’ll call you sometime.”

“Cool.”

“Happy Thanksgiving,” Annie says with a wave as they walk away.

Jeff is pretty quiet on the ride back to Annie’s apartment building, agitatedly tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel.

Annie doesn't try to fill the silence this time. She stares out the window pensively and sneaks a few worried glances in Jeff's direction.

As he pulls up to the curb, he finally says, “Well, thanks for coming. I’m sorry that was so awful.”

"It wasn’t!" she assures him. He gives her a knowing look. “Okay, so it wasn't that great. But I still got to spend Thanksgiving with someone I care about, and that's all that matters." She smiles down at her lap and smooths away imaginary wrinkles in her dress. When she looks up to find Jeff watching her, she asks, "Are you going to be okay?”

He lets out a short, dark laugh. “I think so? I don’t know. I think I just need to be alone for a bit.”

She nods and pats his thigh before unbuckling her seatbelt.

“Hey,” Jeff stops her before she gets out. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why did you tell my dad we were dating?”

“Oh,” Annie flushes light pink. “It just…seemed like the thing to do at the time. It’s not like I—”

“No, I know,” Jeff assures, willing himself not to look away.

Her smiles morphs from embarrassed to sheepish. “Plus—and I don’t know if this is too soon to say but—your dad was totally leering at me, and it was pretty gross. So I was essentially using you to, you know, fend off his advances.”

“Of course,” Jeff smirks at her and she laughs, a little breathless. “It was an act of self-preservation. Totally meaningless."

"Absolutely platonic."

"Right."

"Definitely."

When the tension in the car gets to be too much, Jeff says, "Well, thanks again.”

She understands that he's rushing her out now. “Any time,” she tells him sincerely before kissing him on the cheek and getting out of the car.

As soon as he gets home, Jeff collapses in bed. He’s exhausted and there’s a tornado of conflicting feelings in his chest and he wants to sleep all weekend. So he turns off his phone, gets under his comforter, and cries for something he'd been sure he'd mourned the loss of years ago.

###

By the time Monday comes around, Jeff feels much more centered and sure of himself.

He’s delighted when he catches everyone in the study group off guard with his impromptu Thanksgiving, and he smiles fondly at each one of them as he passes out flutes of cheap champagne.

“Does this mean things with your dad went well?” Britta asks.

He replies matter-of-factly, “Nope. It was a complete disaster.” Britta eyes him strangely, but Jeff's too busy grinning at Annie to notice. “As it turns out, though, the only family I need is you guys.”

“Aww,” Annie and Shirley coo in unison.

“To the family you get to choose,” Jeff says, raising his glass.

“To family!” the rest of the group toasts.


	6. carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie goes all out in an attempt to convince Jeff celebrating holidays is fun. Post-series one-shot based on the prompt "I need 50 more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 4,015  
>  **Disclaimer:** These character's belong to Dan Harmon, etc., etc. I simply enjoy manipulating them.  
>  **Author's Note:** A heartfelt thanks to my beta, bethanyactually, who helped turn this story into something sweet; she certainly is a treat! (Please forgive me.) I also must thank [pepperf](http://pepperf.tumblr.com/) for prompting me!
> 
> The title of this fic comes from [a passage](http://bethanyactually.tumblr.com/post/130203544839/merry-october-from-beth-fremont-to-jennifer) from the novel _Attachments_ by Rainbow Rowell. It's all indulgent, Halloween-themed fluff from here, folks. Enjoy!

It all started the June after they moved in together, when Jeff made the mistake of saying he wasn't _that_ into holidays and didn't want to decorate the apartment after Annie brought up the subject of the fourth of July.

"What does that even mean?" Annie's eyes had gone all wide and wounded.

"What do you mean, what does that mean?" Jeff had said. "I just don't get why people make a big deal out of them. Once you're past age 12, they're just days on the calendar. You learn that all the excitement and magic was in your head."

"Challenge accepted."

"What? No. I am _not_ challenging you, Annie. I learned not to do that a long time ago."

"Holidays can still be exciting when you're an adult, especially when you have special people to share them with. Just you wait, mister. Come October, you're going to be wetting your pants with excitement."

"And then you'll have quite a mess to clean up."

She hadn't even graced that with a response, and he had put the exchange out of his mind, forgetting about it completely.

That is, until October first.

"Jeff?" Annie calls into the lamp-lit apartment when she gets home from work. "I have a surprise for you."

He’s in the middle of reading over a case he’s been consulting on with his old partner Mark to supplement their income, but when he hears her voice, he abandons the file in favor of greeting her.

"How was your—" He starts to ask about her day, but stops in his tracks when he sees her in the doorway, wrangling a bunch of shopping bags. "Annie. What's going on?"

"It's October!" she says, chipper as ever, instead of explaining.

"Yes, but why does it look like you've been preparing for a zombie apocalypse?"

"Oh!" she gasps, slipping the last bag off her arm and setting it on the floor. "Zombies. That's a fun costume idea. Though it is a bit overdone at this point. I think we can come up with something more creative." She gets to her knees and starts rummaging.

"Is my surprise that you've finally snapped?"

She rolls her eyes, looking up at him. "No, silly. It's _October_. That means a whole month of spooky Halloween fun! Here, refrigerate this." She thrusts a gallon of apple cider at him.

He stares at her defiantly for a moment, but she cocks a threatening eyebrow and he caves. "Did all of this spooky fun come out of your paycheck?" he asks from the kitchen.

"It wasn't that expensive," she evades. "And this is just the tip of the iceberg, my friend! I only got a few small things to get us in the spirit."

"Right," Jeff says, infusing as much sarcasm as he can into one word.

“Shirley emailed me today,” she says, changing the subject.

“Oh yeah? What about?” Jeff asks.

“She’s thinking of visiting for Halloween and staying the weekend. She knows she can’t make it for Thanksgiving or Christmas, so she’s hoping to make it into a big reunion. She’s going to try to coordinate something with Abed,” Annie says, emptying a bag that seems to be exclusively filled with packages of fake spider webs.

Jeff peeks into another one and finds several strings of orange-colored lights and sticky window decals. “That sounds nice. How serious is she about this?”

“Apparently, she already bought the tickets,” she smiles brightly, and Jeff grins back at her. Annie’s been talking about their Greendale friends a lot lately, and he knows it’ll mean a lot to her if Shirley and Abed are able to make it back to town together. “There are some scented candles here somewhere,” she says, digging through yet another bag. “I wasn’t sure which ones you’d like, so I bought them all for you to smell. I’m partial to the pumpkin spice one myself, but the caramel apple one smells yummy, too.”

She starts handing Jeff jars, which he obediently accepts, popping off the caps and taking big whiffs before setting them down on the coffee table.

“October Rain,” he reads one of the labels. “Isn’t that just a fancy way of saying ‘dead, wet leaves’?”

“You should have been on the marketing team,” Annie says.

“Actually, that smells pretty good,” Jeff looks at the label again, surprised. He could possibly, maybe enjoy Annie’s idea of decorating. She hands him yet another candle: candy corn. “Ew, this one makes my stomach curdle, though.”

“That’s fine. I figured I’d have to take some of this back. Here’s something I know you’ll want to keep…” She reaches into the only unemptied bag and pulls out a six pack. “Pumpkin beer!”

Jeff’s face lights up and he reaches for his gift. “You are the best girlfriend ever,” he says, hurrying off to the kitchen to find the bottle opener.

“Does this mean you’re going to help me decorate the apartment?” she asks hopefully, following him to the kitchen with a package of webbing clutched in her hands.

He uncaps a bottle of beer and extends it to Annie before opening one for himself and taking a sip. “I do hate the wallpaper in here. Do you think you bought enough spider web to cover it?”

“Only one way to find out,” she says, ripping open the package.

###

Several days pass before Jeff stops expecting another Halloween ambush.

Of course, that’s exactly when Annie strikes.

His Ethics and Law class (yeah, he’d pointed out the irony to Dean Pelton, too) lets out at 3:30 on Fridays. Annie’s not usually at home when he gets back to the apartment—her schedule at the lab means she pretty consistently arrives home around 5 every evening—so he’s surprised to find her at the door, slipping on tennis shoes.

“We’re going costume shopping,” she says in lieu of greeting.

“O-kay,” Jeff cocks his head at her. “Right this very minute?”

“Pretty much.”

He sighs, shaking his head. “I’ll be ready in a sec.”

They end up at costume warehouse, and Jeff groans when they step inside to find large crowds of people rushing around.

"We should check out the full-body costumes first. If we don't have any luck there, we can browse the accessories."

He trails behind her wordlessly—focusing on his phone—as she walks up and down the aisles, picking out several costumes for each of them. Once Annie's satisfied with their haul, she tracks down the dressing rooms on the back wall of the building.

The crowds of people are even denser by the line of stalls, and they end up sneaking into one together while the attendant is occupied with a mother and her wailing boy dressed in a Clifford the Big Red Dog costume.

"What's first, dear leader?" Jeff asks, leaning back against the door and playing with his hair.

Annie tosses him a plastic pouch. A man with a too-cheerful smile is depicted on the front dressed in a pepper costume.

He glances, horrified, at Annie, who holds up her accompanying salt costume with a flourish.

"Nuh-uh, no way," Jeff says, shaking his head adamantly.

"Aww, why not?"

"First of all, salt and pepper? That's the world's lamest couples' costume. Second of all, there is just no way that I am wearing a shapeless lump of felt. Let's not forget what we're working with here." He gestures to his body.

Annie sticks her tongue out at him but grabs the pepper costume and sets it aside with the salt.

"Fine, we'll find something with more sex appeal. Edward and Bella? We could dress up in our regular clothes and cover you in glitter," she tickles his abdomen.

He snorts and wiggles away from her. "No way am I associating myself with that shitty franchise."

"It does glorify abusive relationships," Annie clucks her tongue before sifting through her gathered costumes. "Cat and dog?" She holds up a sleek black bodysuit and pair of cat ears that Jeff definitely approves of, but the dog suit looks much less flattering. He eyes it skeptically till she scoffs in exasperation and shoves it into his hands. "Just try it on."

There's some shuffling and awkward maneuvering as they try to change in the small space, but they make it into the costumes without incident.

The dog suit is definitely made for someone much shorter than Jeff and the hair gets in his nose and makes him sneeze. "Vetoed," Jeff says, eyeing himself critically in the mirror. Annie steps in front of him, fussing with her hair before sliding on the cat ears headband. The costume clings to her body in all the right places, an enticing blend of sexy and cute. "You can feel free to get yours though," he smirks at her. "Might come in handy."

She grins at his reflection and holds up playful claws. "Me- _ow_."

"Exactly. What's next?"

"Hmm…Princess Leia and Han Solo?"

They cycle through all of the costumes that Annie picked out for them, but none of them are quite right. They return their selections to one of the reject racks outside the dressing room (including the cat costume, much to Jeff's disappointment) and wander over to the accessories.

Bloody swords and cauldrons line the shelves, and there's an entire aisle dedicated to wigs, but they walk through the section twice before anything jumps out at them.

"Hey, look at this guy," Jeff grabs a bright green alien and makes it dance in Annie's face.

"Jeff, that's brilliant!"

"I don't know if I'd jump to _brilliant_. It's kind of cute, but it lacks craftsmanship."

"No, silly." She grabs the alien out of his hands. "The X-Files! We should go as Mulder and Scully!"

Jeff frowns, considering, before nodding. "Not a bad idea."

"Jenn from the lab owes me a favor. She could probably make us some realistic badges. Oh, and I bet I could get Abed to loan me a nice wig from the costume department at his studio."

"We do have the same sizzling chemistry as Mulder and Scully,” he says, liking the idea more and more.

“True. And you took nearly as long as Mulder to make your move.” She cocks an eyebrow at him and purses her lips.

“Plus,” Jeff adds, pointedly ignoring her comment, “We know I look good in a suit. Sold."

They take their new alien friend to the checkout and then head home.

###

Jeff and Annie stop at three different pumpkin patches before Annie finds one with a selection that suits her needs.

"This is the one!" she calls to Jeff, staggering back to the car with a pumpkin already cradled in her arms. "Let's cover the backseat with newspaper, though. This one's muddy."

He pats the roof of the Lexus protectively. "Mud was not part of the deal."

"That's why we're laying down newspaper," she says, setting down the pumpkin at his feet and putting her hands on her hips.

She should not look so threatening, dressed as she is in a purple flannel under dark denim overalls, her hair in pigtails, and yet Jeff finds himself caving immediately.

He sighs and, after he's done lining the backseat, hefts the pumpkin into his car. "Holy crap, could you have picked a heavier pumpkin?"

"You have to get the big ones or else there's not enough room for carving."

"Right. Of course."

"Oh, please. As if you're not thrilled to have an excuse to show off your muscles."

"What, these?" Jeff strikes a pose, flexing.

Annie giggles and stands on her tip-toes to catch the collar of Jeff's shirt, pulling him to her so she can give him a kiss. "Thank you," she smiles against his lips.

"For what?" Jeff asks, pecking her once on each cheek before pulling away.

"For compromising the Lexus’s recent detailing to humor me.”

He shrugs and nuzzles into the side of her neck so he doesn’t have to see her smug face when he says, “At this point, it isn’t _just_ to humor you.”

She gasps and then sing-songs, “You enjoy celebrating Hallooo-weeeen.”

“I didn’t say that,” he says, stepping around her and walking over to the pumpkins.

“But you’re not denying it,” Annie says, pleased with herself, as she follows after him.

He doesn’t say anything but spins, walking backward for a few paces so he can grin at her.

They hold hands as they walk up and down the rows of pumpkins until Jeff picks out his own and has to let go to carry it.

When Annie bends down to grab another on their way back to the checkout, Jeff cocks his head at her. “Whatcha doing?”

“We’re hosting the pumpkin-carving, silly. You know Britta and Chang aren’t going to get their own, and it’d just be nice if we provided for everyone.”

He shakes his head, rolling his eyes to look up at the overcast sky. “Yeah, fine,” he says, giving her a narrow-eyed smirk.

It takes Annie 35 minutes to pick out a pumpkin for everyone.

After she slides the last one into the backseat and wipes her hands on her overalls, she asks, “Do you think that’s enough?”

“Gee, I don’t know. I think I need 50 more. At least.”

“I could do without your sass.”

“I don’t think you could, Annie. It is my greatest superpower. Without my sass, I am nothing.”

“And people think _I’m_ a drama queen.”

###

“…and Dean Pelton put creamer in my morning coffee, and the drug-trafficking case I was helping with was apparently thrown out of court, and a lot of my kids failed the amendments exam and rioted, and…and…I’ve just had a really bad day,” Jeff rants into his phone, laying on his horn when someone takes his turn at a four-way stop sign.

“I’m sorry, pumpkin,” Annie says. Jeff can hear her typing, and he feels guilty for distracting her at work. “I have a night in planned for us. Hopefully I can bring your overall day to a net neutral with some snuggling.” He chuckles. “I’ve just got to finish writing this report and then I’ll be on my way home.”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too!”

“Wait, before you go!”

“Yeah?”

“The pumpkin thing…that’s just a Halloween nickname right? You’re not going to start calling me that regularly, are you?”

“Well, not if you don’t like it.” There’s a pout in her voice.

“We can discuss it later. Finish that report and come home to me.”

“Yes, sir!”

Jeff is playing video games when Annie gets back to their apartment.

“So, what’s on the agenda? Are we going to bob for apples in the kitchen sink? Tell each other ghost stories?” Jeff asks when she plops down next to him on the couch, a piece of notebook paper in her hands.

“No and no. We’re going to watch some Halloween classics! I’ve compiled a list of movies that I think we’ll both approve of.” She hands over the paper and he reads over the titles.

“ _Hocus Pocus_?” He raises his eyebrows at her.

“It’s a classic,” she raises her chin defiantly.

“ _Halloweentown_ , _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ …well then. _Hocus Pocus_ is looking better and better.”

She elbows him in the side. “I don’t like scary movies, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever you say, texture girl.”

“Hey, I was just putting aside my personal dislike to pay homage to the genre. It’s not my fault I’m so talented at storytelling.”

“Okay, Abed.” Annie raises a pointed eyebrow and Jeff smirks. “Fine, let’s watch _Hocus Pocus_.”

She squeals, delighted, and pours them glasses of apple cider while Jeff cues up the movie.

They turn out the lights, get under some blankets, and cuddle together, Annie’s head resting on his chest.

It’s quite cozy, and Jeff probably would’ve fallen asleep if Annie hadn’t started singing along. At first, he isn’t sure what the sound is, she’s being so quiet. But as the movie goes on, she gets bolder.

For whatever reason, that’s all it takes for Jeff to get into the movie. He rests his ear on the top of her head and relaxes.

Annie stretches as the credits start to roll and then flashes Jeff a devious grin. “That was fun.”

“It wasn’t the worst way to spend an evening,” he says, tucking some of her hair behind her ear. “One might even say it made my day net neutral.”

She smiles and kisses him. “You’re welcome, _pumpkin_.”

“Don’t push it.”

###

Annie won’t tell him where they’re going, and it’s too dark outside for Jeff to make out where they are.

“This is it, huh? This is how I die.”

“Stop being such a baby. You know I’m not going to murder you. I’m way too emotionally invested.”

“Good to know you’d be willing to murder someone you _aren’t_ emotionally invested in.”

“Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.”

“Tell me where we’re going,” he says.

“Calm down. We’re almost there.”

Sure enough, they pull up to what Jeff is pretty sure is a barn moments later.

“This is not very reassuring,” he says. “I haven’t officially ruled out murder.”

Annie parks the car. “We’re going on a haunted hayride, dummy!”

“Oh. Right.”

It’s a week before Halloween, and a few of families are milling around, waiting for the next carriage to come by. When it does, there’s not enough room for Jeff and Annie to board. They have to wait for the next one.

“I’m bored,” Jeff says a couple seconds after the carriage pulls out of sight. “There’s no cell service here.”

Annie rolls her eyes in response.

After a few moments longer, he asks, “Want to go explore the spooky woods?” She looks conflicted. “C’mon, I bet we can scare some actors.”

She shakes her head at him. “Why not?”

“That’s the spirit!”

Leaves crackle under their boots as they use their cell phone flashlights to find the tree line. Jeff stares into the dense darkness of the forest and adrenaline makes his heart pound faster.

“We could always turn back,” Annie says as if reading his hesitation, her voice a little higher than usual.

He doesn’t say anything, so she wanders a few steps into the black. He clutches at her waist, making sure they stick together.

“Did you hear something?” she asks after a few steps further.

“No. I don’t think so. Why, did you?”

Before Annie can answer something rustles to their right and a black figure whooshes toward them.

They both scream as they turn and run right for the car, jumping in and pulling away before they actually take their hayride.

Later, they’ll tell their friends that they faced an imposing six-foot man with a bloody axe and emerged from battle victorious.

Not even they know the real story: that they were spooked by a single bat.

###

All of Annie’s hard work to get Jeff excited about the holidays culminates on Halloween night.

Both Shirley and Abed are in town, so this is going to be the first reunion of all their study group friends since Jeff and Annie moved into their apartment, and Annie’s excitement has made her extra energetic for days. She plans a fancy dinner party with games and themed snacks, makes Jeff help her clean—“This is the first time they’re going to see our place, so it has to look nice!”—and comes up with a detailed itinerary so they can fit in as much time together as possible.

Though he complains about all the work she’s making him do, it’s worth it for the look on Annie’s face when Abed and Shirley show up with Britta.

Jeff and Annie’s Mulder and Scully costumes are a hit, and everyone compliments their decorating skills, admiring the carved pumpkins and the hand-crafted ghosts Annie hung from the ceiling.

Since the big day falls on a Thursday, their party ends promptly at 11. Their guests gather their coats and bags and Jeff and Annie follow them to the door to say their farewells.

“One thing I don’t get,” Abed says, “is why someone had a real axe at a haunted hayride. Unless,” his eyes light up, “they were using that as the perfect cover!”

“Thanks again for letting me borrow the wig,” Annie says, ignoring his speculation. “I’ll get it back to you tomorrow. We’re still on for lunch, right?”

“We sure are,” Britta tipsily flops over, slinging her arm across Abed’s shoulders. “I’d never pass up the opportunity to embarrass you at work.”

“Too bad you usually just end up embarrassing yourself,” Jeff says with a mocking wince.

“You know what’s too bad? We put so much time and effort into celebrating a holiday that glorifies the devil when All Saint’s Day is practically ignored,” Shirley says, joining them at the front door.

“Yeah, what a terrible pity,” Jeff sneaks a glance at Annie, raising his eyebrows. She suppresses a giggle.

“Speaking of the devil,” Shirley narrows her eyes at Jeff, “when are you two going to stop living in sin? You gotta ask this girl to marry you sometime.”

“Shirley!” Annie rebukes. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we haven’t really talked about it yet. And besides,” she lowers her voice, “I’m not ready to be married. _Or_ engaged.” 

“ _Anyway_ ,” Jeff says, hurriedly changing the subject. “I’ll definitely see you two Saturday, right?”

“For brunch and a lift to the airport,” Shirley confirms as Abed shoots finger guns at Jeff with a wink.

“Excellent. Thanks for coming out, you guys.”

Everyone hugs before Abed, Britta, and Shirley leave, Britta heavily relying on the other two as she stumbles along.

“Don’t forget to dispose of those pumpkins,” Frankie says on her way out. “They’ll rot.”

“This is your last chance to take me up on my offer to sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’.” Dean Pelton strikes several poses in the doorway, showing off his Marilyn Monroe costume.

“For the last time,” Jeff sighs, rolling his eyes, “I’m dressed as an FBI agent, _not_ the president.”

“Can I take this skeleton home?” Chang asks, holding up one of their decorations. “I bared my soul to it and now we’re bonded for eternity.” 

“Yeah, whatever,” Jeff claps him on the back. “Get out.”

As soon as everyone’s gone, they survey their apartment.

“Clean tomorrow?” Annie asks.

“Clean tomorrow,” Jeff confirms.

They blow out all the candles, brush their teeth, and fall, exhausted, into bed.

“So…” Annie says after a stretch of silence, poking Jeff with her toes. “How was it?”

“How was what?” he teases, playing dumb.

“Celebrating Halloween, silly.”

Jeff kisses across her cheekbone in the dark, trailing down to her neck. “It was fun, I guess,” he says into the warm, soft skin.

She squirms. “So I have permission to go all out for Chrismukkah?”

“That’s a combination of Christmas and Hanukkah?”

“Yup!”

He pretends to deliberate until Annie whines, high-pitched, in the back of her throat, making him laugh. “Of course,” he says, kissing the top of her head. “Sounds fun.”

They’re silent for some time before Jeff speaks again. “I am ready, by the way.”

“Hmm?” Annie stirs. “Ready for what?”

“Engagement, marriage…” When Annie doesn’t say anything, he adds, “I’m not trying to pressure you, of course. I’m just saying. Ready when you are.”

He can hear the smile in her voice when she says, “Good to know.”

They fall silent again and Annie turns to face the wall. Jeff slides his arm around her and pulls her into him. “You know, we should start planning for Thanksgiving tomorrow,” he whispers into her hair.

She pats the arm around her waist and says sleepily, “We could go through some of my cookbooks.”

“Perfect,” Jeff agrees.

“I knew I could convince you that celebrating holidays is fun, ya big turkey,” she teases.

“Yeah, well, you’re still not endearing me to themed nicknames.”

“Cornucopia of love?”

He suppresses a chuckle and nuzzles his face into her neck. “Just go to sleep...my little candied yam.”


	7. Discretion Transgression

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jeff and Annie meet up before the new school year to have a chat. Except it doesn't go the way Jeff had planned. At all.  
>   
> Set between seasons 1 and 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 2,205  
>  **Author's Note:** Words cannot express how much gratitude I have for Bethany. Her beta skills are unrivaled, and she makes me a better writer and editor.  <3  
> This one-shot is the result of the tumblr prompt, "Laughing kiss."

Annie’s only just arrived at Jeff’s apartment, but his plan—carefully written speech and all—is already falling apart.

“Uh, hey,” he says, transfixed by Annie’s outfit. Primarily the very low-cut scoop neck of her thin tank top.

Unfazed by his ogling, she pushes past him and into the apartment. “I was glad that you called,” she says. “I mean, I know the new semester starts in less than a week, but I was hoping you and I could, well, _catch up_ before then.”

She’s smiling at him—wide and brilliant and coy as hell—and Jeff swallows hard, dragging his gaze away from her to look anywhere else.

“Yeah, about that…”

He nervously smooths a hand over his hair and, after taking a second to steel himself, looks her in the eye. He’s expended a lot of time and energy imagining all the possible outcomes to this conversation, and he knows the best thing to do, the least complicated way to go about this, is the band-aid method: tell her quick and usher her out the door.

But she’s watching him with her cartoonishly large and earnest eyes, and he finds himself saying, “Let’s go for a walk. You can tell me about your internship at Greendale General.”

“Sure,” she says brightly, though she cocks her head at his weird behavior. “There’s this cafe that opened up a couple blocks over that I’ve been meaning to try, but my hours at the hospital have been all over the place. Britta says their iced coffee is to die for. Should be fun!”

Jeff tries not to openly cringe at the name. “Since when do we take Britta’s word on anything?”

Annie shrugs. “Do you have a better idea?”

He purses his lips, and she smirks before grabbing hold of his hand and tugging him out of the apartment.

He means to pull away from her, force some boundaries firmly into place, really he does. It’s just that the skin of her hand is impossibly soft and there’s something so easy about walking hand-in-hand down the street with her. Nobody’s looking at him like he’s a predator. Nobody’s really paying attention to them at all.

So he tolerates her slightly sweaty palm and shortens his stride a little to match hers.

“How’s your summer been?” she asks after they’ve walked a block in silence.

“Fine,” he says evasively. It’s not like he’s going to outline every pathetic second he spent tracking his old firm’s cases in the news for her.

“Three months of ‘I can’t hang out with the group because I have such a raging social life’ and all you have to say about your summer is that it was _fine_?” Annie bumps him with her shoulder.

He rolls his eyes at her. “I’ve been enjoying my time off, okay? We can’t all be neurotic go-getters like you.”

“Is that your jerk way of asking about my internship?”

“Sure,” Jeff says, barely holding back a grin.

“Good, because I have so much to tell you,” she says, launching into a story about how a filing glitch almost gave a patient with Crohn’s disease an ulcer.

“Sounds like you had fun,” he says, extracting his hand as they approach the coffee shop.

Annie’s brow furrows for a moment, but she quickly occupies her hands fiddling with the hem of her flower-printed skirt. “I did, and I learned a lot.”

“I’m proud of you,” Jeff says as they step into line.

She flushes, curling a strand of hair around her finger and casting her eyes down at her shoes. “Thanks.”

Jeff suddenly feels the urge to coax her gaze back up to him with a finger under her chin or brush her hair behind her ear or something equally sappy, so he shoves his hands in his pockets and clenches his jaw. They stand in silence till it’s their turn at the counter.

“Separate orders?” the barista asks, gesturing between Jeff and Annie.

“Oh, uh…”

“No,” Annie says. “Together. It’s on me.”

“Annie,” he starts.

“I recently came into some money,” she says, smiling so big the skin around her eyes crinkles. “Let me get this.”

Jeff nods once and rocks forward on his toes. “Fine. Thanks.” He turns to the barista.… “I’ll have an iced coffee. One Splenda.”

Annie orders a vanilla iced coffee for herself, and then they walk back out into sun.

Since the patio tables are all occupied, they end up taking their drinks across the street to an indie record store.

“So,” Jeff says as he thumbs through the classic rock section with one hand and takes a sip of his coffee. “How’s the rest of the group?”

“You would know if you came to any of our hangouts, you antisocial, scruffy nerfherder.”

“Take it easy, Princess Leia.”

Annie slaps him on the arm excitedly. “Speaking of, did you get the invite to Abed’s annual original trilogy screening?”

“Yeeeeah,” Jeff drawls. “I’m not going to a costume party.”

“What? The costumes are optional, and everyone else already RSVP'd. It’s going to be our last chance to hang out before the semester starts. Please?”

“We’ll see.” He pauses, then asks, “Are you saying you don’t like the scruff?”

She crosses her arms and pops out her hip, staring at him pointedly.

“Fine. I’ll admit that I’ve been a little evasive this summer.”

“Wanna talk about why?”

“Not even a little bit.”

She frowns, disappointed.

“Are you going to answer my question about the group or what?”

“They’re all more or less the same. Troy’s been complaining about living with Pierce a lot.”

“I’ve seen the Twitter account.”

Annie smirks. “He and Abed entered some gaming tournament and spent the entire month of July talking strategy or ignoring the group in favor of practicing. I babysat Shirley’s kids a couple times so she could go out with her sister, and I haven’t seen Britta for a while now. After a couple get-togethers she opted for the Jeff Winger approach to friendship.”

“You’re not going to let that go anytime soon, are you?”

“What do you think?”

Before Jeff can answer, an employee of the record store approaches. “Can I help you find anything?”

“We’re just looking, thanks.”

“If there’s anything you’d like to sample, we have listening rooms in the back,” they say, pointing helpfully. “Let me know, and I’ll get one unlocked for you.”

As they walk away, Annie pokes at Jeff’s side excitedly. “Let’s pick something out and go listen.”

“Why?” he hedges, glancing toward the back of the store at the small, intimate rooms.

Annie gives him a funny look. “Why not? We’re here. We have time to kill.” She pauses and then gasps. “Oh, my god.”

“What?” he asks, glancing around them in alarm.

“You’re worried you’re going to look dumb wearing those big, goofy headphones, aren’t you?”

He exhales in relief. “You caught me.”

“Well, that’s silly. You look good in just about everything. Come on,” she says, grabbing a record at random, looping her arm through Jeff’s, and hauling him toward the rooms.

He’s glad she’s not paying attention to his face because he can feel heat pricking under the skin of his cheeks.

Once they’re inside, Jeff’s dismayed to find the space is even tinier than he’d expected. There’s a record player mounted on the wall, a wooden bench for sitting, curtains that aren’t long enough to cover the expanse of the glass wall, and barely enough room to turn around.

He folds himself down onto the seat, setting his coffee down next to him, and tries desperately not to stare at Annie’s ass as she fiddles with the sound system.

“So,” he says, his voice cracking. After clearing his throat, he tries again. “So, what are we listening to?”

“Cream… _Disraeli Gears_ ,” she says. “I’ve never heard of it, but the cover is pretty.” She flashes him the picture, which features a lot of pink and yellow all swirled together in a headache-inducing blur.

“Trippy,” he comments dryly as she settles next to him and grabs the single pair of headphones from the hook on the wall.

“I guess we’ll have to share,” she says, cocking an eyebrow at Jeff.

He nods and licks his lips. “Guess so.”

Even leaning in close, their cheeks practically touching, Jeff has to strain to catch the opening bars of the first song.

It’s very guitar driven and pretty much what he expected after seeing the album artwork.

Annie frowns and turns her head ever so slightly to look at Jeff. “I guess this is what I get for picking an album at random, huh?”

Jeff grins, and, when she pouts out her lower lip, his smile turns into a laugh.

Suddenly, her hand is cupping his neck and she’s dragging him closer and gently tugging his lower lip between her teeth.

It’s nothing like the first two times Annie kissed him. Those were strategic and tentative respectively. This time, Annie’s movements are languid and assured.

Jeff simply can’t help his reaction, and the headphones clatter onto the bench, forgotten, as his hands tangle in her hair.

With a needy groan, she angles her head, deepening the kiss. When her cool fingers trail down to his collarbone and then deftly pop open the top button of his shirt, Jeff whines and hoists her up into his lap.

Her hair falls in curtains on either side of his face, and some flyways tickle at his nose. He snickers into her mouth, but that only makes Annie gasp and grab fistfuls of his shirt.

“Get some!” a voice calls from outside the room, scaring them.

Annie jerks back and ends up slipping so far down Jeff’s thighs, she’s awkwardly caught between the door and his knees.

“Fuck off,” Jeff yells at the retreating teenagers before wrapping an arm around Annie’s waist and drawing her back to him.

Her chest presses against his, their faces are inches apart, and when their eyes meet, both of them flush and laugh nervously.

“We should probably go before we get kicked out,” Annie says, a little breathless.

“Good plan.”

They return the record to the rock section and wave sheepishly at the store attendant before ducking outside, tossing their empty cups in a nearby trashcan.

As they walk back to Jeff’s in silence, Annie keeps brushing her fingers across the back of his hand, and his panic mounts every time she does.

“We can’t tell the group we kissed,” he blurts out as they round the corner onto his block.

She stops in her tracks, hurt flashing in her eyes as her eyebrows draw together. “Why’s that?”

“You’re nineteen, Annie.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I know when I was born.”

“Alright, well, I’m practically twice your age.”

“Math is not your strong suit, huh? And so what?”

“Have you met Shirley? Britta? They’d kill me for taking advantage of you.”

“Taking advantage?” Annie asks indignantly. “I was a willing participant. _I_ kissed _you_! I’m not a child, Jeff.”

Her voice rises with anger, but there’s also an injured look on her face that makes Jeff’s heart constrict.

With a sigh, her grabs her shoulders and gives them a reassuring squeeze. “I know you’re not, Annie. But you’re still a _young_ adult. The group won’t handle the fact that we kissed very well, and, in the interest of keeping our private business between us, we should be more discreet. What happened back there in the record store...it can’t happen at school.”

“Discreet,” Annie repeats.

He nods, silently urging her to be okay with this.

“I guess the group can be pretty judgmental,” she says after a moment. “I don't mind keeping this between us.”

“No more kissing,” Jeff emphasizes.

Annie rolls her eyes. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

Though she doesn't try to take his hand again on their way back to his apartment, Jeff can't help feeling they're still not on the same page. More to the point, he’s pretty sure he's the one to blame for that, and he’s got a bad feeling about Britta and Annie being in the same room soon.

He can feel her eyes on him, and turns to see her searching his face. He gives her what he hopes is a reassuring smile.

She smiles back softly and raises her eyebrow. “Did you read anything about our Anthropology professor?”

He snorts. “Why would I waste time doing that?”

“She’s actually really interesting! She’s spent time all over the world, and apparently she’s some kind of weapons savant. I think this year is going to be even zanier than the last.”

“ _Zany_? Okay, Abed,” he teases, relaxing into their back-and-forth.

“Oh, come on.”

“You really think we’re going to top the year that gave us the Human Being, March 32nd, the chicken-finger mafia, and a school-wide game of paintball?”

“It _is_ Greendale,” Annie says. “Anything’s possible.”

Jeff stares at Annie for a moment, and she gazes back at him, all gentle smiles and hopeful eyes.

He’d forgotten how optimistic she is, and how he found her upbeat outlook equal parts annoying and endearing. He grins back at her, affected by her hopefulness despite himself. “You know what? You’re absolutely right.”


	8. Denny's is for Winners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In lieu of their paintball win, the gang has a celebratory meal at Denny's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 2,510  
>  **Author's Note:** A thousand thank yous to Bethany for being a quick, skilled, and complimentary beta. My work would be lacking without you.  <3  
> I wrote this in response to the prompt 'a kiss that shouldn't have happened,' so...angst ahead.

Jeff is surprised their waitress hasn’t killed them yet. She has good reason to, that’s for sure.

“It’s not that complicated,” Abed says to her. “Vicki and Neil are on one check. Starburns is planning to cover Quendra’s meal as a doomed romantic gesture, so you should probably just put their orders together. Eric Wisniewski tricked Chang into getting his food. Pavel’s with me. Garrett is paying for Magnitude to make up for the time he upstaged the perfect tee-up to his catchphrase by being attacked by a squirrel, and everyone else is going on their own check.”

She stares silently at him, eyebrow cocked and lip curled.

“Okay, fine,” Abed says, slowly shaking his head back and forth. “I’ll do it one more time, but then it’s somebody else’s turn. Vicki and Neil…”

The waitress grips her pen so hard, her knuckles turn white.

Jeff cuts Abed off. “You know what? Just put it all on one check and give it to that guy.”

He points to where Dean Pelton is sitting a couple tables away.

“ _Thank you_ ,” she says, walking away to finally put in their drink orders.

“Jeff,” Annie says, scolding.

“Greendale recently came into a lot of money,” he points out because he already knows what she’s going to say. “It’ll be fine. Besides, that woman was about to stick her pencil in Abed’s eye.”

“Huh. I didn’t get that vibe,” Abed says.

“Yeah, I bet not,” Jeff says.

“That’s not the dean’s money to spend as he pleases,” Annie continues. “This is a big party of people. You could be robbing a professor of their salary!”

“Okay, first of all, it’s really hard to take you seriously when you’re covered in orange paint. Second, are you saying that the professors at Greendale are worth little more than a meal at Denny’s?”

She harrumphs and sticks her face in her menu. Jeff barely catches her grumbled, “Not _all_ of them,” and grins in response.

“Knock it off you two,” Britta says. “I’m trying to celebrate, not throw up all over everyone.”

“Don’t those things usually go together?” Jeff says.

Annie and Abed snicker.

“Zing,” Troy says, holding out his hand for a high five.

Jeff slaps it.

“Hey!” Britta protests.

“What? You do drink a lot when you’re happy,” Troy says, and then pokes her in the side until her scowl turns into a smile.

Their waitress comes back with a couple helpers to pass out the beverages.

Once everyone at their table has a glass, Annie raises hers. “I’d like to propose a toast: to Greendale! May the coming year be more prosperous than ever—”

“And buffoonish,” Abed interjects.

“—and be filled with moments that bring us together as a family.”

They all echo Annie’s, “To Greendale,” and clink their glasses together.

“Should be easy to swing, what with Pierce not around anymore,” Jeff says after everyone has taken a sip of their drink.

While the others laugh and murmur their agreement, Annie frowns at her lap in disappointment.

It’s not fair that her disapproval makes his stomach churn with guilt.

###

They’ve been lingering in the parking lot for way too long considering none of them have slept in over 36 hours.

But Annie’s laughing at a bit Troy and Abed are doing—something involving reasons one might wake up in a Denny’s parking lot without pants—and Jeff simply can’t bring himself to make up a lame excuse, get in his car, and go home.

“You might not believe this, but that actually happened to me once,” Britta says.

Jeff snaps to attention, curiosity piqued, and mentally kicks himself for being such a dazed idiot.

“Uh, why would you think that’d be hard for us to believe?” Annie asks, tilting her head and shooting Jeff a conspiratorial look.

“I don’t know. You guys could at least pretend to take me seriously sometimes.”

“We _could_ , but that’d require a lobotomy,” Jeff says.

It really shouldn’t feel like his brain is full of champagne bubbles when Annie chuckles at his joke.

“Whatever,” Britta grumbles, looking down at her phone. “Oh, shit, I have to work in, like, three hours. See you later, James Spader.”

She honks and waves as she pulls out of the parking lot, nearly hitting a family of four in the process.

“I should get going, too. My dad is helping me move out of my dorm at noon and I haven’t started packing.” Abed says.

“Huh,” Troy says. “I wonder if Pierce leaving the group is going to put a strain on our roomie relationship. I better sneak into my room during one of his many afternoon naps, just to be safe.”

“Cool. In the meantime, do you want to get smoothies and help me get my movie posters off the walls?” Abed asks.

“Uh, do you even have to ask? The challenge is getting them off without ripping,” he tells Jeff and Annie.

“Sounds thrilling,” Jeff says under his breath.

Unperturbed, Troy and Abed do their handshake and head for Troy’s car.

“See you later, guys!” he calls before sliding into the driver’s seat.

Abed shoots a finger gun at them.

“And then there were two,” Annie says after a moment of silence, smiling shyly up at him.

Jeff grins back. She really does look ridiculous—orange is not exactly her color. Though she’s clearly dedicated some time to scrubbing most of it off her face, a few stubborn flecks of paint cling to her cheeks, her hairline…the corner of her lips.

“You’ve got a little, erm.” Jeff points.

“Paint?” Annie guesses.

“Well, yeah. Mind if I…?”

“Oh, sure! Thanks,” Annie says, color creeping into her cheeks.

Jeff curls his pointer finger under her chin and swipes at the paint with his thumb.

Annie’s lips part under his touch.

He lingers even after he’s managed to scrub the paint away, and his eyes drag from the curve of her bottom lip up to her eyes.

When their gazes lock, Annie jumps and looks away.

“Is this the part where you leave to get in a quickie with Britta?” she asks, wary, as she paces away from him to hoist herself up onto the trunk of his car.

“Um, no. We actually stopped doing that,” he says, rooted in place.

“I see,” she says, and Jeff’s tempted to ask her what exactly she means by that.

No doubt she sees something he doesn’t. She’s _always_ reading his intentions straight from his head before he’s even formed a cohesive thought, so she’s almost certainly filing away some telling bit of information right now that he doesn’t even understand about himself.

If he were able to experience Jeff Winger through Annie’s eyes, would he like what he saw?

It bugs him that he doesn’t know for sure one way or another.

“So how about that game of paintball?” he says, walking over to her and leaning against the Lexus. “That was pretty wild.”

It’s a lame diversion, he knows, but thankfully Annie goes along with it without missing a beat.

“Yeah. Stakes were raised. Allegiances were tested. Genres were swapped. I’m surprised Abed allowed that, actually.”

“Are you kidding? Old West plus space? It was probably like a _Firefly_ fever dream come true.”

Annie grins knowingly at him.

“What?”

“Jeff Winger, are you a closeted _Firefly_ fan?”

“Shut up. There are, like, ten episodes. Watching that show was the easiest commitment I’ve ever made.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’re impossible.”

“I know. It _does_ seem pretty unlikely that someone so charming and irresistible could exist.”

She stares at him, amusement and incredulity on her face. When amusement finally wins out, she laughs and shakes her head at him.

He feels himself smiling back. “So, Annie Edison. You just helped Greendale win the regional paintball championship. What’s next?”

She nudges his shoulder with her elbow. “Well, there’s preparation for next year’s classes, I put in applications for secretarial jobs at a couple dentist’s offices so hopefully I’ll have work, and, of course, I simply have to make time for my ever-growing reading list.”

“Ah, of course. Never slow down, right?”

“Keeps me one step ahead,” she says, finger-combing some paint out of the ends of her hair. “What about you, huh? Any big summer plans?”

Jeff sighs. “Nah. I’m mostly going to use the summer to work out, drink beer, and not care.”

“Really?” Annie asks, unimpressed. “You’re planning to do absolutely nothing? Doesn’t that get boring after a day or two?”

“Well, I might also take the head of my old firm up on his offer and do some consulting work this summer,” he says, frowning.

She perks up. “Oh, that’d be fun, right? Making connections and securing work for the future.”

“It could be. I dunno if I’m as sharp as I once was, though. I might end up making an ass of myself.”

“Please. As if you could ever lose your knack for playing any situation to your advantage with a well-crafted speech. I say go for it.”

“Yeah. You know, I think I will.”

They sit in contented silence for a moment.

“Can I ask you something?” Annie says.

“Sure. There’s no guarantee I’ll answer honestly, but you’re welcome to play the odds.”

She scoffs and nudges his upper thigh with the toe of her shoe. “Do you really think Pierce is done with the group?”

Jeff snorts. “God, I hope so.”

“I’m serious!” Annie protests. “You’re not going to miss him at all?”

“I’m serious, too. He’s rude and gross and racist. Good riddance.”

“But didn’t we just agree _last night_ that we’re family?” she asks, getting worked up. She angles her body toward him, and Jeff finds himself turning to face her, too. “Didn’t you say I had a good point about not cutting even one member out because, if we do, we might not stop?”

“Yeah, but that was before Pierce decided to leave of his own volition. What’s the matter with accepting the choice he made when it benefits everyone?”

“Because he made it thinking we don’t care about him,” Annie says, her eyes wide and bright and passionate. “I can’t help thinking that it’s our duty to make that up to him. To fight to let him know he’s still part of the group.”

“You’d really go through all the trouble for Pierce? _Pierce_. The same guy who dangled money in your face so he could have a bigger part in a play written for eighth graders?”

“Yes, _Pierce_. The guy who gave a hundred grand to Greendale without a second thought. The guy who stood by Abed for the entirety of his Christmas breakdown. The guy who still believes in love even though he’s never been able to make a relationship work. He’s part of my family, and he’s worth the trouble.”

Jeff cocks a skeptical eyebrow.

“You _all_ are,” she insists. “I’d fight this hard for any member of the group.”

“Even Britta?”

Annie sighs, exasperated, and levels him with an annoyed stare. “Absolutely Britta. She may be a handful, but she’s one of us.”

He frowns thoughtfully.

“I mean, you guys would do the same for me, right?” There’s an uncertain quaver to her voice that makes Jeff’s heart ache.

“Annie, that’s not in question.”

She shrugs. “Sometimes I feel like it is. Like you keep me around because I organize class notes and keep everyone from failing.”

“Well those are valuable skills to have,” he jokes.

Annie gasps, offended. “Real nice, Jeff.”

“Oh, come on. You know you mean more than that to the group,” he says, covering her knee with his hand and holding eye contact.

Her face softens when he touches her.

“Without you, who would we have to humor Pierce or to go along with Abed’s more insane bits until he’s acting reasonably again? Who would we have to remind us to appreciate our school?”

She smiles and ducks her head.

But Jeff isn’t finished. He moves his hand from her knee to cup her chin and gently coax her into looking at him again. “Without you, who would I debunk conspiracies with or tear up the study room to find a pen for?”

She laughs once, but her eyes look sad. “I’m sure you’d find someone.”

“No way. There’s not another Annie Edison in the world, and, even if there were, I’m only interested in the original.”

“Right,” she says dismissively.

Maybe he does it because he’s frustrated she doesn’t believe him. Maybe he does it because he’s trying to prove something to himself or her or both of them. Maybe he does it because he simply really wants to.

Whatever the reason, Jeff finds himself pushing his hand back into her paint-stiffened hair and leaning in.

A breathy sigh of surprise leaves Annie’s lips right before Jeff kisses her.

He hardly applies any pressure at first, giving her the opportunity to jerk away or slap him or whatever. As soon as her lips part and her fingers curl around the collar of his shirt to pull him closer, though, he kisses her earnestly. His thumb brushes along her cheek and his other hand finds its way onto her thigh. When he squeezes softly, she moans into his mouth.

With a low whine of approval, Jeff nudges her nose with his own as he tilts his head and deepens the angle of their kiss.

In response, Annie hitches her leg that’s dangling off the car up onto Jeff’s hip and urges him closer.

When Jeff adds his tongue into the equation, though, Annie seems to come to her senses. She turns her head and moves her hands down to Jeff’s chest, pushing him away.

“Stop,” she says firmly.

He immediately pulls away. “Sorry, I—”

“Don’t,” Annie cuts him off and slips down from his trunk, wobbling when she hits the ground.

Jeff knows better than to try steadying her right now.

“I don’t want your apology, I just—it’s better if we don’t make this a habit, right?”

“Huh?”

“You know, making out at the end of the school year…and then me spending the summer wondering what it meant while you spend the summer feeling ashamed. It’s not worth it. So let’s just agree that this was a mistake and move on.”

She holds out her hand for a shake, and he stares at her dumbly.

There’s a determination in her eyes that makes Jeff certain he’s not going to convince her otherwise. And maybe she has a point anyway. Maybe this is for the best.

“Right,” he says, grasping her hand in his own. “A mistake.”

When he lingers a moment too long, she tears her hand away.

“Great!” Annie chirps with forced enthusiasm. “Then it’s settled. I’ll see you around, Jeff.”

He watches as she practically sprints for her car and feels his heart crash in his chest.

No, he definitely wouldn’t like what he’d see were he able to look at himself through Annie’s eyes.

He wouldn’t like it at all.


	9. this beast that you're after

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie has something important to say, Jeff's discomfort be damned. Set after G.I. Jeff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 1,530  
>  **Author's Note:** As always, thank you to Bethany for smoothing all the rough edges of my fic. I am eternally indebted to you and your skills.  
>  I wrote this in response to a touch meme on tumblr. The prompt was "wrist - fear of losing someone + knee - don’t worry, I’m here for you"

Jeff swallows past the lump in his throat, steeling himself for the onslaught of fussing that’s undoubtedly coming.

As soon as he steps into the hospital lobby, Britta’s gonna be all over him—probing way too aggressively into his current state of mind—and Shirley’s going to give him her ‘there’s no better time to turn to the Lord than when you’re feeling vulnerable’ speech and the dean is going to offer some creepy form of comfort that’ll make Jeff shudder. He’s sure of it.

So it’s pretty surprising when Annie’s the only one he finds waiting. She pushes up out of her chair as soon as she sees him, and Jeff notices that her hair, normally sleek and styled to enviable perfection, is pulled into a sloppy bun at the top of her head. Her eyes look tired and pink.

“I convinced the others to hang back,” she says as if she can pick thoughts right from his mind. “I thought you might appreciate a drama-free release.”

“I, uh, I do,” Jeff says. “Thanks.”

“All your paperwork’s in order,” she says. “We’re good to hit the road whenever you’re ready.”

“I came in here ready to leave,” he says, trying his hand at levity. His voice is too strained to have the desired effect, though.

Annie purses her lips and nods once.

She insists on driving and he doesn’t fight her even though she’s picked him up in his car. (Which was really thoughtful of her, actually, since now he won’t have to worry about getting it from the school’s parking lot.) They’re quiet for most of the ride, but Jeff can feel Annie sneaking glances at him every couple seconds.

Her knuckles are white from gripping the wheel so hard.

When they pull up to his building, she clears her throat. She’s been so somber that he almost laughs when the words out of her mouth are, “Abed deleted the episodes of _Rizzoli & Isles_ I had saved on our DVR.”

“And you’re telling me this because…?”

“Because I know you record it.”

He points a stern finger in her face. “First of all, there’s no way you can prove that. Secondly, no way, Annie!”

“Why not?” she asks in a whiny voice, stopping just shy of pouting out her lower lip.

“I just got home, and I have very big plans for my evening. Non-negotiable plans.”

“Oh yeah?” She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Like what?”

“Well for starters, I’m going to shower in my own damn shower. Then I’m going to get into my own damn bed and try to banish the memories of that lumpy hospital mattress.”

“And there’s absolutely no room for an hour or two of television in those plans of yours?”

She widens her eyes just a little and gives him a pleading look.

He hesitates.

(Of course he fucking hesitates.)

Annie senses weakness—senses victory—and pounces. “Really, it’ll only be a little while. I just wanna catch up on the show and then I’ll be out of your hair.”

Jeff makes a show of rolling his eyes, of acting put-upon. Honestly though, there’s a little voice in the back of his head telling him that maybe it’s not the worst idea to have company right now.

“You have two hours,” Jeff says.

“Starting _after_ you finish your shower,” she says.

He pushes open the car door, shaking his head. “Fine. Starting after I shower.”

Annie pumps her fist, celebrating her victory, and follows him into the building.

By the time they’ve reached the elevator, she’s back to watching him carefully, though. Her eyebrows are drawn together and her teeth are worrying at her lower lip.

She offers him an unconvincing smile when she notices him noticing her.

He smiles half-heartedly back, trying to ignore the dread that’s weighing down his stomach.

###

Four hours and nearly five episodes of _Rizzoli & Isles_ later, the apartment is illuminated only by the television screen. There are cartons of Chinese food scattered across Jeff’s coffee table, and Annie’s head is resting heavily on his shoulder.

He’s pretty sure she’s asleep. Her breathing is even and she hasn’t gasped or cooed or laughed at anything that’s happened on screen in a while.

When the credits start rolling, he tries to reach for the remote without waking her, but she shoots upright as soon as he leans forward an inch.

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She glances around the dark apartment and smoothes some flyaways back from her forehead. “Jeez, how long have I been out?”

“Not too long,” Jeff says. “But I’ll save this last episode so you can actually watch it later.”

She grins at him, a playful gleam in her eyes. “Thanks,”

“Been getting enough sleep?” he asks as casually as he can manage, his eyes fixed on the TV.

“Not really,” she says, and then pauses for such a long time, Jeff looks back at her. When she speaks again, her voice is barely audible. “Not for the last couple days, anyway.” She peeks at him from under her lashes, and it takes him a moment, but he finally gets it.

“Annie,” he says, trying to warn her off the topic.

Of course she doesn’t listen to him. When has she ever? “I know you said you weren’t trying to—and maybe that’s true, on a conscious level—but it’s kinda hard to ignore the fact that you almost killed yourself.”

And there it is: so stark and unflattering. The very thing he never wants to talk about ever again for the rest of his miserable life.

“But I didn’t. So there’s nothing to talk about.”

Annie scoffs and her flaring anger is palpable. “You really think I’m going to let this go just because you weren’t successful? That’s not how it works, Jeff!”

“I don’t want to discuss this. Not with you, not with anyone.”

“Well too fucking bad!” she yells at him, her voice shrill and on the verge of cracking.

He’d turn on a light to see if she’s crying like he suspects, but he doesn’t think he actually wants to know.

When he stays silent, she sighs and scoots closer to him on the couch till her knee bumps his thigh. He jerks when he feels her warm, smooth fingers circling his wrists, but he doesn’t pull away.

She grips onto him with such ferocity that he’s certain she can feel his pulse pounding against her thumbs.

“I’m pretty sure you’ll take anything I say right now as an insult, but it’s really important to me that you know how much I care about you,” she says in a whisper.

“Annie,” he says again, his voice softer and hoarser than before.

“No, I need to say this,” she says, catching his gaze in the low light.

Her eyes are blazing with emotion, and Jeff finds himself unable to look away…even though seeing her like this makes his heart ache.

“I’ve been in some pretty dark places in my life during times when I’ve felt friendless and alone. You, Jeff Winger, are not friendless _or_ alone. I hope you know you can always come to me when things get bad. No judgement. No mocking. Just someone who loves you and wants to help.”

If she can tell that his heart rate speeds up when she says _love_ she doesn’t let it show.

He clears his throat and blinks back the tears pooling in his eyes. “Thanks.”

Annie nods once, squeezes his wrists, and then lets go. “Okay then. I should get home.”

She starts gathering her things, fumbling in the semi-darkness, and Jeff kinda hates himself for stopping her.

“Could you,” he starts, breaking off to take a deep breath before trying again. “Could you stay. I don’t…I don’t think I want to be alone right now.”

Annie hesitates.

“I’m not asking you to, um, you know. I just mean, I, uh.”

She saves him the trouble. “I understand. Let me just call Abed to check in, okay?”

“Okay,” Jeff says.

She squeezes his knee before stepping out into the hall.

By the time she gets back, Jeff’s cleaned up the takeout containers, set out a pillow and some sheets, and retrieved a t-shirt and pair of shorts for her to use as pajamas that’ll definitely be too big.

“Thanks for doing this,” he says when she gifts him with a warm, grateful smile.

“It’s my pleasure.”

“Okay, well I’m gonna…” He trails off, jabbing his thumb toward his bedroom.

“Oh, yeah, you must be pretty exhausted. You should absolutely go get some rest.”

They stand awkwardly staring at each other for a few moments longer before Jeff takes two long strides forward and kisses Annie on the forehead.

She reaches up to cover the hand that lands on her cheek with her own and sighs softly.

“Goodnight, Annie,” he whispers against her forehead.

“Sweet dreams, Jeff,” she whispers back.

He doesn’t have the heart to look back at her as he escapes to his room, but he’s comforted by the feeling of her eyes following him.

That night, he sleeps better than he has in weeks.


	10. this beast that you're after: part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie and Jeff share a moment in the morning. Set after [this post-G.I. Jeff fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4319961/chapters/18497161).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Word Count:** 1,220  
>  **Author's Note:** This is dedicated to Bethany for being my biggest cheerleader and an awesome friend. She inspired this follow-up by leaving a million comments on the G.I. Jeff fix-it. I also owe her a huge thanks for beta-ing this even though she's under the weather.  
>  This little one-shot will serve as a nice segue between its predecessor and the Basic Sandwich replacement caper I'm in the middle of writing. *insert devious cackle here*

The sun is already streaming bright and insistent into Jeff’s room by the time he wakes the next morning. He sighs and rolls onto his back, flexing his toes and feeling the stretch radiate up through his legs.

As he lounges, in no rush to get out of bed, Jeff tries to hang onto the doziness in his brain, to keep it from clearing. He can’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed…probably because he can’t remember the last time he’d slept soundly through the night.

After a moment, the familiar ping of his coffeemaker alerting him to a freshly brewed pot sounds throughout his apartment, snatching away his serenity. The events of the previous week come back to him in a distressed, throbbing heartbeat.

Jeff throws his arm over his eyes and bites down on his lower lip, trying his hardest to stamp down the sudden urge to cry.

Thankfully, a voice cuts through his distress.

“But I’ll kneel down, wait for now,” they sing. “And I’ll kneel down, know my ground.”

Remembering that he asked Annie to stay, Jeff feels a tug in his chest and slides out from under his comforter. After pulling on an undershirt, he pads out of his room.

Annie’s in his kitchen, shimmying in front of his stove.

“And I will wait, I will wait for you,” she continues, getting louder and more enthusiastic. “I will wait, I will wait for you.”

Jeff smiles in spite of himself. Annie’s in his kitchen, shimmying in front of the stove and singing hits off the American Top 40 countdown.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” he says as he slides onto one of the barstools at the counter.

She jumps nearly a foot in the air and whips around to face him. “Jeff! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Um, this is _my_ apartment,” he points out.

She turns back to whatever she’s got cooking on the stovetop, shaking her head. “I just mean you could have coughed or cleared your throat or something.”

“Ah yes, next time I’ll try to be more considerate of how high-strung you are.”

He can pretty much hear her rolling her eyes. “That’s all I ask.”

They lapse into comfortable silence, and his smile only widens as he drinks her in. She’s still wearing the t-shirt he lent her to sleep in, though she’s changed out of his shorts and back into the worn jeans she’d been in when she picked him up from the hospital. The shirt is way too large, the neck so stretched out that it’s starting to slip off her right shoulder. There’s a smattering of dark freckles there that makes Jeff gulp.

He forces himself to look away.

“Here,” Annie says, setting a mug of coffee and a heaping plate of scrambled eggs with spinach and cherry tomatoes in front of him. “I figured you’d be hungry for something that doesn’t taste like cardboard.”

He’s about to protest that this is way too much for one person when the smell hits his nostrils. His stomach growls loudly in response.

Annie grins, clearly pleased with herself for anticipating his needs.

He resists the urge to fling some egg in her face and instead grumbles a begrudging, “Thank you,” before digging in.

Jeff tries to ignore how closely she’s watching him as she sips from a steaming mug of coffee, but after several mouthfuls he starts to get self-conscious.

“Do I have egg on my face? Unruly bedhead?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“You’re not exactly being subtle with all that staring,” he says.

“Oh, sorry.”

When she doesn’t elaborate, he sets down the fork and squints at her. “Seriously. What is it?”

Her eyes widen and she takes a too-big gulp of the hot coffee. 

“Mhffn,” she mumbles incoherently, gesticulating with her empty hand.

“Annie,” Jeff says sternly.

She swallows hard and then forces a laugh. “You know, now that you mention it, your hair does look pretty ridiculous. You should probably start your morning hair care routine as soon as possible. I’ll take care of the clean up in here!”

His hand reflexively flies to his hair, but he refuses to be diverted that easily. “First of all, you’re the one who made the mess, so of course you’re going to be the one cleaning it up.”

“I was doing you a favor!” she says, speaking over him.

Jeff ignores that. “Secondly, I’m going to tell everyone in the group that you snore if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Troy and Abed live with me,” Annie says dismissively. “They’d know that wasn’t true.”

“Troy and Abed are extremely susceptible to persuasion,” he volleys back.

She purses her lips and drops her gaze to the coffee in her mug. “You’re not gonna like it.”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “I’d kinda already worked that out.”

“I was just…I don’t know! Checking.”

“Checking?” he asks.

“For signs. You know?” A sheepish blush is creeping into her cheeks. “I was checking to see if I could tell how you’re feeling.”

“Oh,” he says, understanding. “Gotcha.”

The following silence is thick and tense.

“Is this what it’s going to be like from now on?” he asks. “All my friends playing lookout, constantly waiting for me to lose it?”

“Jeff, of course not,” Annie says, reaching out and covering his hand, which has curled into a fist on the counter. “But things are going to be a little different for a while. No one wants a repeat scare.”

He closes his eyes and swallows hard over the lump in his throat. “How am I gonna face them? After the hospital, how am I gonna be able to look them in the eyes?”

“The same way you always have,” she says, her voice gentle. “Knowing that their total disregard for your personal space comes from the fact that they care about you.”

That gets him to laugh.

“You’re not alone, remember? If it ever gets to be too much, I can snag their undivided attention in an instant.”

“Oh yeah?” he says, opening his eyes. She's gazing at him, her eyes achingly kind. “How’re you going to do that?”

She grins mischievously. “I have my ways.”

He nods, unclenching his fist so he can give her hand a grateful squeeze. “I don’t doubt that.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Then Annie gently extracts her hand from his and turns toward the stove. “I should get the pan soaking.”

“Wait,” he says. She looks back at him, cocking a curious eyebrow. “These eggs aren’t gonna eat themselves.”

She gives him a funny look. “I know. That’s where you come in.”

“Share with me?”

With an amused smile, she retrieves a second fork from his utensil drawer. “Well, if you insist.”

“Hey, Annie,” he says after a second, his voice hushed.

“Yes, Jeff?”

“You don’t have to guess at how I’m feeling next time. You could just ask.”

A few emotions play across her face—surprise and hope and something Jeff can’t put a name to—before she sucks her lower lip into her mouth and nods, looking almost shy.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll ask.”

He grins down at the plate of eggs, pushing a tomato along the edge with his fork. He’s overcome with the weirdest certainty that he’d tell her the truth.


End file.
